From: Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>
To: Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] The origin of /home
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2018 16:15:05 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W60U-SnVAWY7Ya3xYcTh9OvNKyDr3wyqcYOx4EHMkU3Gg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20180927153353.F354118C08E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
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On Thu, Sep 27, 2018 at 11:34 AM Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:
> > From: Dan Cross
>
> > particular in sites with lots of users like universities and
> > production-focused corporate groups
>
> The existence of /usr, /usr/bin, /etc, /lib, etc dates back to the Research
> group at Bell, so I don't think we can look to these other environments
> for an
> explanation.
>
Sorry, I was (very) unclear in this point. I was referring to two separate
things:
1) Why things were spread out across multiple filesystems (space and/or
performance considerations dating from the Bell Labs days), and
2) The notion that rigid structures built in at a very low level would
naturally give rise to local naming conventions as "large" sites grew
beyond the limitations built into the system. E.g., /udd/u1 etc vs /home vs
/usr/users vs /net/somehostname vs /var/users vs whatever. As a concrete
example is the use of name-dependent hierarchical home directory paths like
"/home/c/r/cross" because one tried to put too many directories into /home
(I have actually seen the UFS directory entry limit hit in /home on a
machine that had >32k users). Anyway, eventually through whatever accident
of history "/home" seems to have won as a de facto standard.
> "Hmm. Well, we've got space in /usr: create /usr/bin
>
> I seem to recall reading (don't recall where, OTTOMY) an explanation for
> the
> creation of /usr/bin, and I think it was performance related; IIRC the
> issue
> was that they wanted to keep the directory size down (both for disk block
> caching, and search time, reasons). Or maybe that was later on, and it was
> originally created for 'user-maintained' ancillary programs (another vague
> memory)?
>
I think the latter might be a justification-after-the-fact: /usr as the
filesystem containing stuff of interest to the users.
> The more intriguing possibility from the antiquarian point of view is
> > whether someone coined "/home" and then THAT led to the rise of the
> "home
> > directory" nomenclature.
>
> My memory is that the term "home directory" predates /home - perhaps on
> other
> OS's such as TOPS-20, but I don't have time to research that. (I did look
> quickly in the Multics docs, and it has 'working directory', i.e. current
> dir
> - but it refers to the home dir as 'original WD', i.e. the WD at the time
> of
> login.)
>
If I recall correctly, the mappings from "users" on TOPS-20 to directories
is an injection, but I don't think they used the "home directory"
nomenclature.
Certainly the analogy with one's directory as home is clear enough.
- Dan C.
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-09-27 20:16 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 48+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-09-27 15:33 Noel Chiappa
2018-09-27 20:15 ` Dan Cross [this message]
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2018-10-10 15:26 Noel Chiappa
2018-10-10 15:45 ` Clem Cole
2018-10-10 15:48 ` David
2018-10-13 6:58 ` Michael Kjörling
2018-10-12 0:15 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-10-10 14:43 Norman Wilson
2018-10-10 16:26 ` arnold
2018-10-11 19:10 ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2018-10-10 17:08 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-10-11 0:22 ` Steve Nickolas
2018-10-11 2:33 ` David Arnold
2018-09-28 2:39 Doug McIlroy
2018-09-27 23:14 Noel Chiappa
2018-09-28 5:27 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2018-09-27 14:31 Noel Chiappa
2018-09-27 12:08 Cág
2018-09-27 12:30 ` Alec Muffett
2018-09-27 12:58 ` Donald ODona
2018-09-27 13:54 ` John P. Linderman
2018-09-27 14:09 ` Ronald Natalie
2018-09-27 14:18 ` Jon Forrest
2018-09-27 14:28 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2018-09-27 15:36 ` Jon Forrest
2018-09-27 15:54 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2018-09-27 18:49 ` Jon Forrest
2018-09-28 0:50 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2018-10-01 1:52 ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2018-10-10 2:38 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-10-10 3:07 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-09-27 17:33 ` Donald ODona
2018-09-27 14:47 ` Dan Cross
2018-09-27 17:20 ` arnold
2018-09-27 20:42 ` Cág
2018-09-27 21:07 ` Dan Cross
2018-09-27 22:04 ` Clem Cole
2018-09-27 22:18 ` Henry Bent
2018-09-28 8:33 ` Tony Finch
2018-09-28 18:23 ` Jeremy C. Reed
2018-09-28 16:02 ` Nemo
2018-09-28 16:15 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-09-28 17:28 ` Arthur Krewat
2018-09-28 19:38 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-09-28 19:47 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-09-28 20:30 ` Arthur Krewat
2018-09-28 20:00 ` Nemo
2018-09-28 21:07 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
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