From: "Jim Wise" <jwise@draga.com>:
>
> Well, for one thing, saying `disk is cheap' doesn't really help users
of
> older hardware which is not SCSI or IDE based (NetBSD/vax anyone?),
but
> more importantly, there are plenty of reasons other than lack of disk
> space for sharing some or all of /usr -- think uniformity in a lab
> environment for one example.

Not that another example is needed, but sharing /usr makes life easier
on my 4 node cluster.  I actually don't have any local disks, other than
a floppy (used for booting, until PXE arrives) because I don't really
need them right now.  It is easier to just add RAM and use the fantastic
UBC support to cache the toolchain and source. :-)

> Anyway, the fact is that shared /usr is not only commonly used, but
has
> been supported by NetBSD for ~ever.  If you want to stop supporting
> that, that's a valid topic for discussion on tech-userlevel, or
> tech-install, perhaps -- in the mean time, we shouldn't be just
yanking
> it away.

Yup, I often boot a new machine diskless before booting it from a
hard drive.  I have ethernet cards that are pre-configured systems on
my NFS server, and I always just mount /usr from the NFS server rather
than tying up more disk space for infrequently used bits.

-Andrew