On Sat, 3 Feb 2007 16:36:40 +0100
Christian Biere <christianbiere@gmx.de> wrote:


> Please, tell me just one reason why /bin and /usr/bin shouldn't live
> on the same partition.
> 
Sometimes, it's historical -- I have machines that are set up that way
because when I first installed them, I used that partitioning and it's
very painful to change that unless you have a spare disk and want to do
a reinstall.

The original reason was historical -- the first Unix system I used had
a very small but fast (head per track) root disk; there just wasn't
room for anything else.

A more substantive reason today is recovery -- less to fsck after a
crash before you can start doing *something*.  I like that setup for
experimental machines that do crash more often.

I've thought about setting up VMs this way.  I need a separate root so
I can have a separate /etc and /var per VM, but /usr can be shared.

Overall, you're right, though, and I no longer set up (most) new
machines.  I still have old ones, though.


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb