From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 29841 invoked from network); 21 Jul 2020 18:23:13 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 21 Jul 2020 18:23:13 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 0EA229C8E9; Wed, 22 Jul 2020 04:23:11 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C67AD9C8DD; Wed, 22 Jul 2020 04:22:15 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 2862E9C8DD; Wed, 22 Jul 2020 04:22:14 +1000 (AEST) Received: from freefriends.org (freefriends.org [96.88.95.60]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 5602993D09 for ; Wed, 22 Jul 2020 04:22:13 +1000 (AEST) X-Envelope-From: arnold@skeeve.com Received: from freefriends.org (freefriends.org [96.88.95.60]) by freefriends.org (8.14.7/8.14.7) with ESMTP id 06LIMB7q018832 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Tue, 21 Jul 2020 12:22:12 -0600 Received: (from arnold@localhost) by freefriends.org (8.14.7/8.14.7/Submit) id 06LIMBJ4018831; Tue, 21 Jul 2020 12:22:11 -0600 From: arnold@skeeve.com Message-Id: <202007211822.06LIMBJ4018831@freefriends.org> X-Authentication-Warning: frenzy.freefriends.org: arnold set sender to arnold@skeeve.com using -f Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2020 12:22:11 -0600 To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org, gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net References: <862d8a34-456d-33c1-7ef0-58c6e8089de9@tnetconsulting.net> In-Reply-To: <862d8a34-456d-33c1-7ef0-58c6e8089de9@tnetconsulting.net> User-Agent: Heirloom mailx 12.5 7/5/10 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [TUHS] /bin vs /sbin X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote: > To me, this makes it fairly self evident that /sbin was originally for > statically linked binaries. At least in Linux. Dunno about that. > Does anyone have any history of /sbin from other traditional Unixes? > I'd be quite interested in learning more. /sbin and /usr/sbin came into being in the late 80s when Berkeley and USG were standardizing on file system layouts for diskless workstations; Sun and DEC and others were also in on this. /sbin specifically was meant to hold the executables meant for use by root that previously had been in /etc along with config files. (sbin ==> super-user bin.) The idea was that /etc held things specific to a box, while /bin, /sbin, /usr could be remote mounted from a server. This is also when /home came into practice as the place to hold home directories. This avoided having umpteen zillion copies of the same files (executables, man pages, libraries, etc.) since they could be mounted read-only from one or a few servers. At the time, disk space was not nearly as cheap as it is now. This is also when /var came into being for log files and such; again - it was per machine space, so it lived either on a small disk in the workstation or on a per-client chunk of space on the server if the client was totally diskless. HTH, Arnold