[TUHS] Understanding the /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin Split

[Warner Losh]

On Feb 2, 2012, at 3:29 PM, Tim Newsham wrote:

>>  Thankfully, most binaries are dynamic these days, which saves a ton of space on / (as a percentage of what's used).
> 
> you're kidding, right?  Disk space of binaries?
> (I still wish "du" had a "-$" flag that pulled info from a recent price
> database).

No.  I'm not kidding.

Remember that these systems exist in more places than on monster-sized hard-disks.  Embedded systems had limits of 4MB, 8MB or 16MB when these patches were done.  While NAND has grown so that 64MB or 256MB parts are more common on boards, the savings is still rather substantial and allow for additional functionality.  The space savings rivals 'crunchgened' binaries (think busybox).  Savings between 32MB and 64MB is only a few $$$, but if you ship a million of something, the savings can be substantial.

In addition, having everything link in shared libraries makes doing security updates much easier.

Warner