On 24/10/2019 17:44, Chris Elvidge wrote:
> On 24/10/2019 16:37, Mike Scott wrote:
>> On 24/10/2019 16:28, Chris Elvidge wrote:
>>> On 24/10/2019 15:43, Mike Scott wrote:
>>>> But I don't like an all-in-one partition, so, I started over (on the
>>>> dekstop box), and repartitioned for a fresh root, var, usr, and so
>>>> on. I mounted the new root, and created mount points, and mounted
>>>> those partitions. Then again used rsync -ax  >>> root>, edited the fstab in the new etc (using device names), and
>>>> updated the SD card's cmdline.txt.
>>>
>>> I wish you'd explained that bit at the beginning.
>>>
>>>
>> Yes. But it's only after the fact that I see the issue. Which, in all
>> the "how to"s I've looked at, isn't mentioned. I'd call it a bug -
>> anything that's needed to boot should be available in the root file
>> system. The arm-specific libraries are needed, but aren't in the right
>> place.
>>
>> Surely I can't be the only one to try moving /usr to a separate
>> partition, when it's standard practice anywhere else?
>>
>> Anyway, problem resolved, and thanks again to all for their patience.
>>
>
> See:
> https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken/
>
> Quote:/usr on its own filesystem is useful in some custom setups. But
> instead of expecting the traditional Unix way to (sometimes mindlessly)
> distributing tools between /usr and /, and require more and more tools
> to move to /, we now just expect /usr to be pre-mounted from inside the
> initramfs, to be available before 'init' starts. The duty of the minimal
> boot system that consisted of /bin, /sbin and /lib on traditional Unix,
> has been taken over by the initramfs of modern Linux. An initramfs that
> supports mounting /usr on top of / before it starts 'init', makes all
> existing setups work properly.
>
> There is no way to reliably bring up a modern system with an empty /usr.
> There are two alternatives to fix it: move /usr back to the rootfs or
> use an initramfs which can hide the split-off from the system.

Interesting discussion. I'm somewhat old fashioned, I guess. That little
discussion is totally new to me - and I would note that in freebsd a
/usr partition is standard, while mint is very happy to use a separate
/usr.

And in my days (long gone!) as system manager of SunOS systems, /usr (in
particular) was network mounted and shared, because some workstations
had no [expensive] disk at all. It made network-wide updates easy, and
the small root partition had all the "personality" for each machine.

But things have moved on while I've not been looking. I'll certainly
take your thoughts on board for the future.  Thanks.


--
Mike Scott
Harlow, England

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