/usr partition?

[Taco.22]

I normally partition a drive into /, swap and /home on an install.  However, I was just curious about a /usr partition.  Seeing that most applications are stored there, does it mean in the case of a system reinstall that only those apps on the install disc will be overwritten and all the other installed apps will remain untouched?  On the other hand, is /usr liable to get glitchy and contribute to the reason for a reinstall?  Just wondering.

[Neal ManBear]

Taco,
In doing a reinstall where a /usr partition is being used, the /usr partition should be formatted, too. If you are already using one, I'd recommend using your own remaster for any such installation.

[Taco.22]

Neal,

In doing a reinstall where a /usr partition is being used, the /usr partition should be formatted, too.

Yeah, I thought that might be the case.  I was just curious about whether it would be useful in saving a lot of reinstallation of software if you did need to do a system reinstall.  Obviously there is no easy way out on that one!  It's the old story - backup!!

[T6]

never seen a install using /usr partition or the need to have one

in fact i always have only / and swap, home is not that useful

[Rudge]

never seen a install using /usr partition or the need to have one

in fact i always have only / and swap, home is not that useful

/home is useful for your music, movies, pics and stuff ??

[T6]

/ can hold the /home folder, /home folder will do the same

the only benefit of have /home separated as a partition happens when you reinstall to avoid data loss(config files and personal files stored in this partition)

i never recommend to leave files on the same hard disk you are formating to install a os, you can do it but if partition/format process fails you end up screwed and fail here is so easy, human error or software error is always possible

with pclinux you rarely need to reinstall, maybe each 2 or 3 years, hardware changes or really big updates to distro(2009-2010 case) are the main reasons so a data loss prevention on this case is not really useful

anyway you should have backup of your files always, outside of your hard disk if possible

the benefit of have multiple partitions this days is not clear for most users, very few benefits against many complexities of create partitions that you won't use deeply, system will and you use system but you shouldn't worry for small detail like this one

i think that /usr could be helpful depending on your usage and if you have multiple hard disks to speed things up but many partitions inside one hard disk won't help much

[Rudge]

/ can hold the /home folder, /home folder will do the same

the only benefit of have /home separated as a partition happens when you reinstall to avoid data loss(config files and personal files stored in this partition)

i never recommend to leave files on the same hard disk you are formating to install a os, you can do it but if partition/format process fails you end up screwed and fail here is so easy, human error or software error is always possible

with pclinux you rarely need to reinstall, maybe each 2 or 3 years, hardware changes or really big updates to distro(2009-2010 case) are the main reasons so a data loss prevention on this case is not really useful

anyway you should have backup of your files always, outside of your hard disk if possible

the benefit of have multiple partitions this days is not clear for most users, very few benefits against many complexities of create partitions that you won't use deeply, system will and you use system but you shouldn't worry for small detail like this one

i think that /usr could be helpful depending on your usage and if you have multiple hard disks to speed things up but many partitions inside one hard disk won't help much

I always just keep a backup of /home (not the .files) and let the install use the whole drive creating a "/"  "/swap"  and a "/home".  Then I copy the /home files from the backup back in.

[Bald Brick]

I normally partition a drive into /, swap and /home on an install.  However, I was just curious about a /usr partition.  Seeing that most applications are stored there, does it mean in the case of a system reinstall that only those apps on the install disc will be overwritten and all the other installed apps will remain untouched?  On the other hand, is /usr liable to get glitchy and contribute to the reason for a reinstall?  Just wondering.

When hard drives were much smaller than today I often installed /usr on its own partition on a different drive. That reason seldom exists today.

Another reason might have been that some people wanted to separate their day-to-day programs from the basic system: /bin, /sbin, /lib and so on. But these days most users wouldn't know what to do without their GUIs, and the desktop environments are all in /usr, so you might say that /usr has become part of a basic system.

And overwriting parts of /usr with earlier files from a remaster while retaining the rest is simply a recipe for disaster on a rolling distro. You'd end up with a mixture of older files and updated files. So you'd have to let the installer format /usr anyway, and that means that keeping it on a separate partition would be most uneconomical.

(One historical reason for a separate /usr partition is that /usr doesn't always have to be on a writable partition. That's why /var isn't a subdirectory of /usr. But it's not at all relevant today.)

[T6]

"When hard drives were much smaller than today I often installed /usr on its own partition on a different drive. That reason seldom exists today."

the same reason applies for swap, when there wasn't much ram because it was expensive swap in a second hard disk made the difference but this days this is not important

about save .files you need to do backups of those for Thunderbird and other apps that stores files in this folders that you might need and if you don't save in a backup you can make a mess

[Crow]

never seen a install using /usr partition or the need to have one

in fact i always have only / and swap, home is not that useful

+1

[horusfalcon]

In most desktop applications, not separating partitions is no biggie, especially on a smaller drive.  If you have a large system (e.g. a server or high-end workstation) with multiple physical drives, or a few huge capacity drives, then it might make sense to develop a partitioning scheme specific to the type of work done on the system.  /usr could easily be one of those partitions with good reason.

As with most things, though, this turns out to be something that takes a bit of thought to get right, and it's different for different work environments.  Also, the more exotic the partitioning scheme gets, the more work it takes to keep it running smoothly.  It's all about what works best for your environment and the efficient use of your resources.

Just as an example, when I set up my laptop (with a Hitachi 500 GB drive), I accepted the default partitioning scheme during the install and let it run.  Here's what I wound up with:

/dev/sda1 = 12 gigs, ext4, mounted on /
/dev/sda5 = 3.8 gigs, swap, mounted as swap
/dev/sda6 = 449 gigs, ext4, mounted on /home

So it would seem that the default installation procedure finds good reason to create a partition for /home and for swap, but not for /usr.  Different systems with different drives and RAM loads will naturally have different results.

Later On,
D