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From: damien@lugnut.stu.rpi.edu (Damien Neil)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: File hierarchy (was Re: Linux or FreeBSD)
Date: 17 Sep 1995 09:26:55 -0400
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <43h7mv$c0@lugnut.stu.rpi.edu>
References: <409iah$inf@galaxy.ucr.edu> <41vkbl$bkq@hamilton.maths.tcd.ie> <x77n3v6j1t.fsf@blindman.lm.com> <43diee$djf@post.gsfc.nasa.gov>
NNTP-Posting-Host: lugnut.stu.rpi.edu
In article <43diee$djf@post.gsfc.nasa.gov>,
Jason Garman <garman@beowulf.gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote:
>>thoroughly weird file hierarchy
>FSSTND is standardising the fs hiearchy... most distributions follow this;
>besides the file locations aren't _that_ different than BSD.
This reminds me of something I've been meaning to ask. Is there any
document giving a rationale for FreeBSD's file layout? I've become
completely confused as to what criteria have been used to distribute
files between (/usr)/bin and (/usr)/sbin. Under some systems, /sbin
has been a location for statically linked binaries. This is not the
case with FreeBSD: all binaries on the root partition are statically
linked by necessity, and none of the ones in /usr/sbin are. Under the
Linux FSSTND, /sbin and /usr/sbin are to contain binaries that only the
superuser would ever want to execute. That doesn't seem to describe
the situation with FreeBSD either, though; ping in is /sbin, nslookup
is in /usr/sbin, and both are often used by users.
- Damien