[ILUG] file management

[Paul Jakma]

On Wed, 21 Nov 2001, kevin lyda wrote:

> but you didn't.

i did. you gave example of mailers.. i say from user POV, they see a 
mailer. what mailer does is it's own business. if it wants to create 
tonnes of files (eg one per message) in a dir fine¹, but that doesn't 
make it a good idea.

> the most sensible argument against files in /usr/bin is
> performance. i.e. lots of files in a dir are slower then lots of
> files in many dirs.

indeed.

> my response is that that certain apps use lots of files in a
> single dir, so kernel folks should be solving that problem (which
> they are).

to an extent.. but if you make performance for n files/dir acceptable
some silly app will start doing n^y files/dir. the kernel developers
will try to accomodate that by implementing sane improvements to fs's,
but the app is still being silly if it pushing way past the limits of
common fs scaleability - and the kernel developers will tell them 
that. 

there's another problem with giant directories. you cant mount parts
of them on seperate volumes. hiving off dirs to new volumes is a
standard way of managing disk space on unix. (and doesnt affect 
package management).

but gosh, you cant do that when you ferk everything into /usr/bin.

or you might want to hive off less critical stuff to a common NFS
volume. eg, with my IRIX boxes i can dump stuff like
/usr/{gnu,bsd,freeware} on an NFS volume without fear of bootup
dependencies. on a linux box you're ferked.. (and most ferkin
distributions will be buggy somewhere wrt to mounting /usr on NFS - ie
init scripts needing stuff that is in /usr/bin).

also, on IRIX², i have the benefit of being to be able to use PATH to
specify which /types/ of tools i prefer. Eg, if i prefer to use the
GNU utilities over the SGI ones, where a GNU tool is available, i just
need to make sure /usr/{gnu,freeware} are listed before /usr/bin in
PATH. handy too for scripts that depend on oddities of one set of
tools (be it of vendor tools or gnuisms).

(using the PATH variable as a selector? gosh, what an incredible
idea.. <end sarcasm>).

cant do that when everything sits in one ferkin giant dir.

i feel the biggest practical impediment to a more sane /usr on linux 
dists is the huge level of discussion, quarrelling and deadlock 
anything namespace/structure decision related will generate.

as for long PATHs: come on kev, how often do you look at your PATH
variable? do you echo it every 5 minutes to satisfyingly see how short
it is? no you dont... it's $PATH, and 99% of the time you never look
at it. the other 0.9% of the time you refer to it as $PATH, and the
final 0.1% of the time you actually look at its contents is to deal
with problems in login scripts.

why would a long PATH be a problem?

> kevin

--paulj

¹. and note when they do this it is specifically to deal with 
deficiencies in various NFS implementations. /not/ because thousands 
of files in one dir is inherently a good idea.

². and note that IRIX (6 at least) has a /good/ package management
system.