> That would make more sense then. I thought for sure that years ago I read > /usr shoud be on / but my memory does seem to fail me. I never understood > why and onetime I installed without it and everything worked fine. in theory, you should be able to mount a shared /usr partition via NFS; saving disk space and admin hassles. as such, you need to be able to boot without it, in case of emergency. > I have to say that directories have always been the most confusing aspect > to a linux install for me. When I was really new I never understood why > some things were here and others were there. Then to make things worse if > you switch dists everything changed. i.e. Patrick has always said that > /opt is the standard place for optional software but everyone else seems > to use /usr/local. If you think Linux is confusing, take a look at Irix or some of the other commercial unices. most Linux distributions clear up a *lot* of filesystem cruft like /opt, /usr/ucb, /usr/tmp, /usr/local, and more. InMyNotSoHumbleOpinion, /opt is a heinous hangover from the commercial unices. I fail to see why it should be separate from the rest of the system software, which is under /usr. if it's 'optional' software that isn't part of the regular distro, why isn't it in /usr/local? or if not there, then why not mixed in with the rest of the stuff in /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/X11/bin? at least put it under /usr/opt, so it's not taking up space unexpectedly on the / filesystem! one of my main gripes with SuSE is the amount of crap they put under /opt... so if you want to keep your / partition small, you end up having to either install less stuff at first, get to a shell and symlink /opt to /usr/opt, then install the rest; or just make a separate /opt partition and deal with repartitioning space later. in short; /opt is system applications and files, so they ought to go somewhere under /usr like the rest of the system files. > I don't know what I would do without find :-) locate is your friend. :) Carl Soderstrom -- Network Engineer Real-Time Enterprises (952) 943-8700