A really messed-up /opt

skoal · 2005-02-06 11:14:20

The typical *nix hierarchal filesystem was never about aesthetics, or for that matter, even organization. It was about intent and use.

I can think of no better way to explain this than the following:

Do like I do and set "/usr/local" and "/opt" to separate partitions. If you have another Linux box laying around somewhere, boot into it, and mount Arch's "/opt" partition. Your other machine will most likely be able to use those same installed packages like KDE, with little or no problem and without redundant installations. Try doing the same for KDE sitting in your "/usr" Arch partition, and see what mess follows. Personally, I would like to see a lot more applications and associated libraries placed in "/opt".

Why do these discussions keep coming up? Well, it's no different than trained Windows users asking "How come that file I just downloaded isn't showing on my dekstop?". That's just a symptom from all Linux distributions implementing it bass ackwards from day one. Thankfully, Arch has it partially right. Lead on baby. Pioneer the way...

vicious · 2005-02-06 12:50:28

Finally there are some worthwhile arguments. But...

First of all, arguments "/opt is a mess" and "/usr is a mess" are subjective. If you have more than, let's say, 30 files on disk it will ALWAYS be a mess if you don't organise them properly. Our systems probably have tens of thousands of files installed. If you have little knowledge about what is where, it will ALWAYS look like a mess for you no matter how it is organised by default. It really is not revelant if we use /opt or /usr - Arch WILL look bloated to some people and perfectly organised for others.

There are two types of keeping system files. You can either order them by their source (where they came from, what package) or by their destination (their purpose, how do you use them).

The first way is usually adopted by propertial software. By large, standalone applications. Why? Because it is providers' intention to lock you in, to prevent cooperation between their sotware and competitors' software. They create their own subsystem which is installed in a separate directory.

The second way is usually adopted by free software (or "good" propertial software). Files are kept in standard locations, in standard formats. You can reuse them for other purposes than the provider intended. You have a separate directory with images, with programs to run, with documentation, etc. This encourages sharing and colaboration.

Both ways lead to a mess unless you know your system and make some effort to maintain it. It's a matter of philosophy - do you want to use complete, all-in-one solution (MS Visual Studio, MS Office, ...) or do you want to use small, flexible tools (gcc, bash, tex, ...).

By placing GNOME in a separate directory, you are encouraging the first solution. It reveals that you would rather think of GNOME as a separate universe, loosly bound to the rest of your system. That's not good. GNOME should integrate well will the rest of UNIX. I'd like it to be part of it.

My post is getting a bit too long...
DECIDE: Either you follow multiple-subsystems philosophy. Then turn Arch into ~GoboLinux.
OR: Either you follow single-universe philosophy. Then don't use /opt. You should go even as far as to merge /usr/X11R6 tree into /usr.

Arch seems to try to please everyone. It's a source distro+binary distro, it's a no-bloat(no info)+bloat(pacman, dependencies) distro. It's an /opt+/usr distro.

<personal_opinion>What a mess! Do either one way or the other - not try to merge everything.</personal_opinion>

miqorz · 2005-02-06 13:17:37

I'm a little sick of your long winded posts about trying to change the Arch distro when you're not even a user.

Moreso to the point your long winded posts only CLAIM to dispute the theory that /opt is nicer than /usr but really don't go anywhere after that.

Not to mention you've yet to make a single decent attempt at explaining why /usr is any better than /opt for large package like qt/mozilla/gnome.

/usr has the most standard NON-standard applications prefixed to there that I've ever seen.

/opt was made for a reason, Arch seems to be only distro that "gets" that.

I find it over-whelming refreshing to see that quite frankly. And all these people that bitch on and on about don't have reasonable enough arguments to hold any water.

All I'm seeing is personal preference and a need to have things "just so".

SO either rebuild the packages to fit your kind little niche. Or switch distros.

And since you've done option two. Kindly stop bitching about things that shouldn't concern you in the least.

RedShift · 2005-02-06 18:55:22

IIRC, usr stands for Unix System Resources. So it would be unlogical to place gnome in /usr because the system does not depend on gnome to run.
I like how my system is organized, but do remember, liking/disliking is a subjective opinion. But ofcourse, there are many points of view in this reasoning. What is required to run the system? A server does not need gnome. But a typist in some office somewhere does...
It's nice to have a /opt, with gnome, mozilla, etc... there, which each have their own bin, lib, etc...

vicious · 2005-02-06 19:29:23

vicious wrote:

DECIDE: Either you follow multiple-subsystems philosophy. Then turn Arch into ~GoboLinux.
OR: Either you follow single-universe philosophy. Then don't use /opt. You should go even as far as to merge /usr/X11R6 tree into /usr.

Simple question: if you think /opt is so good, why gcc isn't installed in /opt/gcc? Why X11 isn't installed in /opt/X11? Why xterm isn't installed in /opt/xterm?

CONSEQUENCE

Either use /opt for every non-essential package or don't use it at all.

Actually, I like BOTH concepts - placing packages in /opt and placing packages in /usr. But I don't like placing some here and some there.
Is GNOME worse than fluxbox? You treat it as if it was.

lucke · 2005-02-06 19:41:53

vicious, in your mouth no info files and pacman with dependency support sounds just as bad as complete info system and plain sources. I prefer the first, honestly. Taking only the good/useful things from some solutions isn't unforgivable. Sure, no problem, obviously there are not enough distros out there following the same philosophy and scheme, we should make Arch the same way. Innovation is evil after all. Gobolinux and Rubyx obviously suck as well, as they're trying to, omg, change the FHS, because it suits them better. Sacrilegists, they should make another slack-like or debian-like distro, instead of losing their time on some useless stuff. Come on, guys, there still aren't enough Mandrake based live cds, all Arch devs should stop their work and concentrate on creating one. And you, vicious, should create your own perfect distro and call it AnARCHist.

Evil cheers,

lucke

ps. I wrote a more sane post some time ago, but I've accidentally closed the window, probably because my PC was quite lagging while I was moving all of /opt, /home and /etc to /usr.
ps2. No, this wasn't a worthwhile argument.

vicious · 2005-02-06 20:01:06

lucke wrote:

Innovation is evil after all.

I don't agree. I also don't agree that Arch Linux is an innovation.

Gobolinux and Rubyx obviously suck as well, as they're trying to, omg, change the FHS, because it suits them better.

Is FHS a dogma? No, it isn't. Distribution uniformization is a nonsense. Distros should be different so that you can choose what you want. I don't like FHS - does this mean that I should go to hell?

You seem not get a point. Placing everything in either /usr or /opt (not in both places) is not about reducing your choice.

PS. Placing GNOME in /opt and gcc in /usr is not an innovation, it's a retardation.

iBertus · 2005-02-06 20:40:20

I agree that more non-system files should be placed in /opt if that is the standard in Arch. The only reason I see for not putting some apps in /opt is that either they don't work there or that the build system used by their developers makes it difficult. GNOME, fluxbox and any program that can be placed in /opt should be. Granted, it probably doesn't make sense to create a new directory in /opt for a bash script. Everything else should go in /opt.

I hate to make another Windows reference but the idea of putting everything in /usr reminds me of Microsoft putting the sol.exe file in WindowsSystem32, because you know that Windows wouldn't run without sol.exe!

This is my opinion! Guess what? It might not be the same as yours! Does that make me wrong? NO! It also doesn't make me right. The simple fact is that Arch has a way of doing things that is currently working and has been since the start. As skoal has already said, putting packages in /opt makes the system modular and easy to manage. The "powers that be" must have thought so during the planning stages of Arch. The fact is that it really doesn't matter. If I mess up and install something /usr or /opt it's still going to work. Isn't that all that matters.

This thread seems to be repeating itself and making no progress.

kill · 2005-02-06 21:38:19

vicious wrote:

DECIDE: Either you follow multiple-subsystems philosophy. Then turn Arch into ~GoboLinux.
OR: Either you follow single-universe philosophy. Then don't use /opt. You should go even as far as to merge /usr/X11R6 tree into /usr.

So either try to be like Windows or be like *BSD. Hm... I think I will stick to being like Linux where /opt means optional and is intended for large self contained packages.

cactus · 2005-02-06 21:42:07

/opt is for system agnostic software. You could theoretically mount that partition from another installation (granted it needs same glib and gcc version) and have things mostly work, like sharing opt over nfs for a cluster of cloned servers.

/usr does not really support this. more installation specific stuff in here. gcc and glibc are platform specific. Even X. What works on one machine (video card) will not work on another off the bat. Hence, it is in /usr.

but..what do I know anyway. I suppose when it comes down to it, I fall into the "hey. I like it this way" category with a bunch of other people. Since some of those other people just happen to be the devs, I guess I lucked out.

Benedict_White · 2005-02-07 00:32:31

We appear to be getting into a religious debate, about something which is not really that significant.

First of all, part of the Arch spec is where things are placed, is that self contained packages should be in /opt.

/opt is here to stay. No question. It was not invented here, just adopted.

The only relevant question is what should be there and what should not.

That is it.

If you wan't a distro that does not use /opt, make your own. Use Arch as a base, itis GPL'd. In fact you could quite easily crib almost everything from here and exclude /opt.

Everything can't possibly go in /usr, (except in a dedicated server) so please do not get stressed about this.

miqorz · 2005-02-07 03:15:52

I think Vicious has only brought up ONE good point.

Why aren't other window managers in /opt as well? /opt/X11 for Xorg then all window managers could be prefixed to /opt/X11 a very good idea methinks.

vicious · 2005-02-07 07:35:44

miqorz wrote:

I think Vicious has only brought up ONE good point.
Why aren't other window managers in /opt as well? /opt/X11 for Xorg then all window managers could be prefixed to /opt/X11 a very good idea methinks.

No, they should be in /opt/fluxbox, etc. They are not part of a "self-contained" (what does this mean???) package called X11.

And no, this is not my main point. My point is that if you want to use /opt for some packages, then you should use it for everything. There is no excuse for placing mc, gcc, libs in /usr IF /opt is what you want.

cactus wrote:

/opt is for system agnostic software. You could theoretically mount that partition from another installation (granted it needs same glib and gcc version) and have things mostly work, like sharing opt over nfs for a cluster of cloned servers.
/usr does not really support this. more installation specific stuff in here. gcc and glibc are platform specific. Even X. What works on one machine (video card) will not work on another off the bat. Hence, it is in /usr.

EVERY binary program is platform specific. Provided you consider only one CPU architecture (as Arch is not supporting abything other than i686), gcc can be also placed in /opt. And current xorg is modular, so the same installation can work with multiple video cards.

I suppose Arch users rarely need to do such "combinations" as you describe. If they want share software between multiple machines, they can set this up themselves (just modifying some PKGBUILDs and recompiling).

kill wrote:

vicious wrote:
DECIDE: Either you follow multiple-subsystems philosophy. Then turn Arch into ~GoboLinux.
OR: Either you follow single-universe philosophy. Then don't use /opt. You should go even as far as to merge /usr/X11R6 tree into /usr.
So either try to be like Windows or be like *BSD. Hm... I think I will stick to being like Linux where /opt means optional and is intended for large self contained packages.

Stupid. GoboLinux is not like Windows. BSD is as good thing IMHO. Finally, there is no such thing as "being like Linux", because Linux has multiple faces and in fact is quite AnARCHistic.

iBertus wrote:

I hate to make another Windows reference but the idea of putting everything in /usr reminds me of Microsoft putting the sol.exe file in WindowsSystem32, because you know that Windows wouldn't run without sol.exe!

I've always thought that /bin, /lib, /etc directories are for "system" files and that /usr is for user-oriented programs which are managed by the distribution (contrary to /usr/local, which is the administrator's playground).

There is no need to argue. All I'm saying is that Arch policies should be more consistant. Period.

cactus · 2005-02-07 16:07:23

vicious wrote:

There is no need to argue. All I'm saying is that Arch policies should be more consistant. Period.

I think the point some people are making is that arch policies are consistent. They have had opt like this for a while now.
Most people like it. Hence, they use arch.

vicious · 2005-02-07 16:52:04

Ok, if you think they are consistent, I won't argue any more. I just hope that packages will be gradually moved from /usr to /opt and eventually /usr will be dropped. Or, also good solution, they will all go to /usr. I don't really care which scenario will happen.

I use CRUX now and have GNOME in /usr

kill · 2005-02-07 19:02:48

vicious wrote:

Stupid... Linux has multiple faces and in fact is quite AnARCHistic.

Then why are you saying it should be one way or that other.

vicious wrote:

DECIDE: Either you follow multiple-subsystems philosophy. Then turn Arch into ~GoboLinux.
OR: Either you follow single-universe philosophy. Then don't use /opt. You should go even as far as to merge /usr/X11R6 tree into /usr.

Now then your calling me stupid for for saying linux should be linux when you have hit the nail on the head linux is its what YOU want it to be. The way arch wants to be is with /opt. Now I can only hope your idiocy gets you banned.

vicious wrote:

I just hope that packages will be gradually moved from /usr to /opt and eventually /usr will be dropped.

Why the hell do you even care, you don't even use arch.

vicious · 2005-02-07 19:51:40

kill wrote:

vicious wrote:
Stupid... Linux has multiple faces and in fact is quite AnARCHistic.
Then why are you saying it should be one way or that other.

Not Linux, but ArchLinux should have a distinctive face. It shouldn't be a inconsistent mix.

vicious wrote:
I just hope that packages will be gradually moved from /usr to /opt and eventually /usr will be dropped.
Why the hell do you even care, you don't even use arch.

I care, because I like Arch. I will probably come back when it is more mature. When pacman doesn't hang and has good error messages. When (some other conditions here I can't recall now).

PS: I didn't mean to offend you. Your post just seemed stupid to me. Sorry.

Benedict_White · 2005-02-07 20:45:42

vicious wrote:

I care, because I like Arch. I will probably come back when it is more mature. When pacman doesn't hang and has good error messages.

I have never had a problem with pacman, what sort of problems did you have with it?

vicious · 2005-02-07 21:25:08

Benedict_White wrote:

vicious wrote:
I care, because I like Arch. I will probably come back when it is more mature. When pacman doesn't hang and has good error messages.
I have never had a problem with pacman, what sort of problems did you have with it?

I don't want to come back to this. Pacman didn't want to remove one package (I think it was gnome*). It just exited doing nothing. So I decided to remove the files by hand - I made a list with -Ql and rm'd -r them, forgetting that some directories (/etc) were on the list
I can't give more info about the problem - I had to reinstall the system after that.

kth5 · 2005-02-07 21:35:57

which is one of the reasons why packages like gnome are in /opt. easy to spot, no problem if deleted.
you must have been doing something wrong if you had to reinstall the whole system afterwards, just leaving stuff where it is doesn't break the system just bloats it.

vicious · 2005-02-07 22:11:19

kth5 wrote:

which is one of the reasons why packages like gnome are in /opt. easy to spot, no problem if deleted.
you must have been doing something wrong if you had to reinstall the whole system afterwards, just leaving stuff where it is doesn't break the system just bloats it.

Yes, I did something wrong - I deleted my /etc. But every accident has it's own purpose.
Btw., I don't like floating crap in my filesystem.

tranquility · 2005-02-07 22:38:22

vicious wrote:

Benedict_White wrote:
vicious wrote:
I care, because I like Arch. I will probably come back when it is more mature. When pacman doesn't hang and has good error messages.
I have never had a problem with pacman, what sort of problems did you have with it?
I don't want to come back to this. Pacman didn't want to remove one package (I think it was gnome*). It just exited doing nothing. So I decided to remove the files by hand - I made a list with -Ql and rm'd -r them, forgetting that some directories (/etc) were on the list
I can't give more info about the problem - I had to reinstall the system after that.

Pacman usually does this. This is, in my humble opinion, the way to do it. Perhaps you did not bother to read the manpage, because if you did, you'd come to the conclusion that it is indeed possible to have pacman remove that sort of packages. Usually there is some sort of inconsistency or some unusual circumstances.
The fact that you rm'ed the packages is your doing only. There are plenty of posts in the forums that should have helped you.
Anyway, because Linux is free, you have the power to choose whatever Linux distro to use. What I think is that people around here would have everything to gain by thinking a little bit more and asking about things instead of stating that 'X is a mess' and that 'ArchLinux has too many of buggy packages' or that 'XYZ is b0rk3d'. I'm not actually saying everything is fine and right the way it is. Most likely some packages aren't well packaged, I don't know. But I believe we can work together to change that.
United we conquer, divided we fail. (not that we're really trying to conquer anything).
I offer this comment with the hope that the recent discussions and that all differences are resolved. I'm not a dev, just an ArchLinux fan, and what I think is that the dev's gave much thought as to where stuff should be and that seeing the same discussions over and over is quite tiring.
What I try to do instead, is putting myself in their position and try to understand that it is hard to wrestle the maintenance of various packages.
To sum it all up, I vote to everyone that wants to contribute in whatever way you can, translating, wiki pages, flag'ing out of date packages, etc, because ArchLinux is, in my opinion, open to user input and healthy discussion.

P.S.:Sorry for such a long post

Benedict_White · 2005-02-07 22:50:30

vicious wrote:

I don't want to come back to this. Pacman didn't want to remove one package (I think it was gnome*). It just exited doing nothing. So I decided to remove the files by hand - I made a list with -Ql and rm'd -r them, forgetting that some directories (/etc) were on the list

Ah, I see. In order to get rid of a boil on your foot you blew the lower half of your body off. Oops.

Still everyone makes mistakes.

vicious · 2005-02-07 23:18:42

Benedict_White wrote:

vicious wrote:
I don't want to come back to this. Pacman didn't want to remove one package (I think it was gnome*). It just exited doing nothing. So I decided to remove the files by hand - I made a list with -Ql and rm'd -r them, forgetting that some directories (/etc) were on the list
Ah, I see. In order to get rid of a boil on your foot you blew the lower half of your body off. Oops.
Still everyone makes mistakes.

Exactly! But I have recovered I installed CRUX instead of Arch because it's nice to change distro frome time to time (if you are forced to reinstall).
Maybe someday I'll switch back to Arch.

miqorz · 2005-02-07 23:23:48

You're blaming pacman for user error? That's rich.

Arch Linux

#26 2005-02-06 11:14:20

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#27 2005-02-06 12:50:28

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#28 2005-02-06 13:17:37

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#29 2005-02-06 18:55:22

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#30 2005-02-06 19:29:23

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#31 2005-02-06 19:41:53

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#32 2005-02-06 20:01:06

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#33 2005-02-06 20:40:20

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#34 2005-02-06 21:38:19

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#35 2005-02-06 21:42:07

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#36 2005-02-07 00:32:31

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#37 2005-02-07 03:15:52

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#38 2005-02-07 07:35:44

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#39 2005-02-07 16:07:23

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#40 2005-02-07 16:52:04

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#41 2005-02-07 19:02:48

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#42 2005-02-07 19:51:40

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#43 2005-02-07 20:45:42

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#44 2005-02-07 21:25:08

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#45 2005-02-07 21:35:57

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#46 2005-02-07 22:11:19

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#47 2005-02-07 22:38:22

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#48 2005-02-07 22:50:30

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#49 2005-02-07 23:18:42

Re: A really messed-up /opt

#50 2005-02-07 23:23:48

Re: A really messed-up /opt

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