[TUHS] The origin of /home

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

arnold at skeeve.com writes:
> Norman Wilson <norman at oclsc.org> wrote:

> > a.  It no longer matters a whit whether the (real) root file
> > system can fit into a 5MB slice of the disk or the like, so
> > just merge everything that spilled into /usr in the tiny-disk
> > days back into the root where it belongs.

> Plan 9 did exactly that, no?

Yes, but no.  With namespaces, There Is No Root.  You can pretzel up
the filesystem to your heart's content, and nobody else will ever know.

But on the filserver, there are some required conventions.

* /usr is for home directories

* /bin is an empty mountpoint

* /sys contains "the system" in the form of reference files, configs,
  source code, etc.

* /lib is a semi-sparse directory tree that non-system programs can use
  to store data/configs/etc.

* every CPU architecture gets its own top level directory (e.g.
  /386,  /sparc, ...)

But the fileserver conventions are only there because the cpu/terminal
diskless boot scripts need a basically consistent fileserver
environment to do their initial bootstrap from.  After that, the
namespace is your to pervert at your pleasure.  And such perversion
is actively encouraged :-)

http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/9 (e.g. "Implementation of Name Spaces")

http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/names

--lyndon