/root on a separate dataset breaks FreeBSD-base installation

[Rodney W. Grimes]

> > The norm is there are very few cross directory links and
> > this is very rarely an issue unless someone modifies the
> > system in a way outside of the norm.  Having /root as a
> > seperate dataset is outside the norm.  Note this also
> > places /root outside of the boot environment directory
> > which may bring other issues in the future.
> >
> > Ports should all install stuff inder the /usr/local hierarchy
> > and that is usually self contained, so hard links are not
> > an issue there.
> >
> > Further note, if you have made /usr/local its own dataset
> > your defanitly going to have issues with boot environments
> > if you try to run more than 1 version of FreeBSD as /usr/local
> > is pretty version dependent.
> >
> > /var is a whole nother crap mess with boot environments,
> > pkg and multiple versions cause pkg stores its caches
> > and databases in /var and /var is not part of the BE.
> 
> 
> That's exactly my thinking. Boot environments might work for servers 
> where there are very few packages installed on host directly and the 
> host is usually running dedicated jails. But it's another story on a 
> desktop where the system and all packages take 17GB. I don't want to be 
> reinstalling everything manually whenever I upgrade the base system and 
> I don't want to deal with pkg having to work across multiple boot 
> environments.
> 
> For desktop my preference is to keep one copy of /usr/local, var, tmp, 
> root, home, and so on, so essentially just have the base system and 
> basic configuration versioned in the boot environment. Sure, some 
> packages won't work properly, but that's easy to fix. I build them with 
> newer base on another system then reinstall all of them on the desktop.
> 
> I don't consider /root as part of the base system.

Here we disagree, I consider /root very much a part of the base
system and it should be pretty much unused.  And I am a person
that logs in as root and su -'s out to user accounts, but I
still do not use /root as a normal home directory, everything
else is done and stored some other place.

Do understand you can have more than 1 uid 0 account on
a system :-)

> A hardlink doesn't 
> make it part of a base system.

The fact that it is shipped with the base system, created by the
base system installer, and is pretty much a mandatory required directoy,
however does make it very much part of the base system.

> It's home directory for the /root user, 
> where I often have larger files that I either copy to install or just as 
> a backup of some parts of the system.

I would never store backup's in /root!

> Versioning it per boot environment 
> wouldn't make sense.

Double edge sword.  The set of tweaks needed in .cshrc or .profile may
vary by version of FreeBSD installed.

> --GrzegorzJ
-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 rgrimes at freebsd.org