Why is spot not in /home?

[mikeb]

Simple answer.
That is the place Barry K. put it when he decided to have spot.

I have found some inventive locations for locales too

Mike

[01micko]

Me, well I think this is a valid discussion... why not /home/spot? Even /etc/spot or /var/spot? (being a system account and all).

The absence of (adhered to) standards in G(u*)NU/Linux is partly why systemd sprung up and there is plenty of yay or neighing about that.

It's certainly not difficult to move spot, the biggest problem is backward compatibility which has hardly been given a care in puppyland since I've been here.

---

u*. Stallman's addition to 'GNU', (like GEENOME [WTF?].. yep.. 'gnome' is too easy to say.. I blame Americans .)

[jamesbond]

@mikeb - problem with standards are:
- there are too many of them
- the proponents don't follow them either
- some of them are too onerous
- some of them don't make sense.

@mikeb - "My view is that /root became the dumping ground for system stuff rather than being the admins/puppy users profile folder".
Fully agreed. It should not be.

@mikeb - "I also question the desire to have applications installed in there... "
Some people (e.g. sunburnt) come from the other side which definitely hates to have programs spread files over /usr, /opt, /etc and whatnot; and prefer to have an application that is self-contained in a directory, and preferably can be installed/removed by a non-root user (this is the reason for Rox Apps, by the way); and this case the only reasonable place to put the apps is in their home folder.

@mikeb - "the root folder is free and configs that belong in there are hidden.. only the user startup folder is included ... the rest is for the user to use..."
"These worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there." --> "These files are yours except spot. Attempt no messing around there (unless you already know what you are doing)"

@mikeb - "The initial question...I wanted to know if there was any 'technical' reason for the spot in root"

I think bigpup and yourself already answered the question yourself - because BarryK put it there, and because in the past only content of /root was saved. No other technical reasons.

@mikeb - "All good fun"
Certainly, it has been invigorating

@01micko - "why not /home/spot? Even /etc/spot or /var/spot"
What do you gain by moving? I had the chance to move it out when we re-architect Fatdog64 600, but in the end we chose not to.

@01micko - "The absence of (adhered to) standards in G(u*)NU/Linux is partly why systemd sprung up and there is plenty of yay or neighing about that."
You know this is propaganda from the systemd camp, right? There are many of them: FHS, LSB, freedesktop, etc etc. Now there is another one, the "systemd standard"

@01micko - "It's certainly not difficult to move spot, the biggest problem is backward compatibility which has hardly been given a care in puppyland since I've been here."
Moving from PET to TXZ package is easier. You simply declare that PET is not supported, older packages will not work. This sets the expectation right. Then later you can add a small print that says, "actually it sorts-of ... may be ... perhaps ... work. Here is a converter for you, but no guarantee that it will work even if you can convert it."

Moving /root/spot elsewhere is more subtle, because you can't simply declare in advance which PETs will continue to work and which ones won't, though the majority probably will.

[mikeb]

Hmm yes that rox only way of running things ... seems a lack of the appreciation of the joys of sfs union layering to me ..but that was an old battle.

Actually as regards moving the offending folder, since anything run as spot would be using the path set in passwd it suggests nothing would need altering/fixing and only an extra icon to the 'sandboxed' spot folder on the desktop perhaps.
One of the less painful changes. Unless of course the hard coded paths bunny is hopping around.
(if anyone has every suffered SONY's sonic stage software you will know all about the joy of its hard coded profile paths...move nothing or else!!!)

Well glad its been food for thought... pup=$(( simple + fast + small )) in my head and and anything that appears to be != I feel needs the maginifying glass and deer stalker treatment

mike

[jamesbond]

Actually as regards moving the offending folder, since anything run as spot would be using the path set in passwd it suggests nothing would need altering/fixing and only an extra icon to the 'sandboxed' spot folder on the desktop perhaps.
One of the less painful changes. Unless of course the hard coded paths bunny is hopping around.

Thanks to this discussion, I have updated my scripts to use $SPOT_HOME (which gets its value by awk-ing /etc/passwd) instead of /root/spot. These are not ordinary scripts; they are the configuration scripts that needs to keep root-spot configuration in sync (e.g, if you change the cursor for root, you need to do the same for spot otherwise if you run browser as spot, that browser will display the *old* cursor and you've got questions like "I have changed my cursor and it takes effect everywhere except on firefox" ). I don't know how many of these kind of scripts are in standard puppies, 01micko would be in a better position to answer that.

EDIT: We're not moving /root/spot, but modifying this scripts now helps to anticipate the day we do.

(if anyone has every suffered SONY's ...

Speak no more. I recently had to deal with peculiarities of installing Fatdog on a Sony UEFI machine. What should have been a couple of minutes turned into days. It is hardcoded to boot Windows at all cost, and has hidden strategies to boot it despite my various counter measure - the only fix was to remove Windows bootloader altogether).

[mikeb]

Yes SONY and MS must have produced quite a few kids by now but who gets custody afterwards?

And yes...who wants the default cursor... I did notice that thing when testing ...well when I was able to see it

I won't suggest a /etc/skel folder at this point...too many tomatoes to dodge already..

Mike

[01micko]

What should have been a couple of minutes turned into days. It is hardcoded to boot Windows at all cost..(snip)

IMHO, not being a real programmer per sé, hard coding is the apitimy of all evil.

Early on I learned that certain things have their set environmental variables and that respecting those saves pain.

Trouble is that NOTHING follows standards. Nobody cares. It is "what suits at the time" and there are no rules.

Have I said this before?

[mikeb]

Have I said this before?

yes 7 posts back.... must be a sore point

For an easier life it is nicer when there is some attempt at consistancy.

Mike

[linuxcbon]

Already asked but Barry has his way of doing things.
The only solution is that you make your derivative with more "standard" stuff.

[unicorn316386]

When I save in Firefox, it goes to root (root/Downloads or root/Desktop), and with spot it goes to root/spot. Since both are relatively in the same place, I think it is organized this way. The feature accomplishes it's goal (only saving to spot) like Sandboxie does for me in Windows. So if spot should be home/spot, I think most of root should be in home too (since it has a lot of your personal/edited settings). What is the purpose of root folder then though? I never paid much attention to "standards for other Linux distors", Puppy was the first one that worked for me and was light and friendly (except for #puppylinux chat ) so I've been a fan of only Puppy ever since. As long as I know where that stuff goes them I'm good.

[bigpup]

There is no /home in Puppy.

/root is used like /home is used in other versions of Linux.

The only home used in Puppy is /mnt/home

Maybe you can understand with this picture.

[unicorn316386]

There is no /home in Puppy.

/root is used like /home is used in other versions of Linux.

The only home used in Puppy is /mnt/home

Maybe you can understand with this picture.

I understand from your description alone. My point was the placement of root/spot makes sense, which you seemed to have confirmed.

[mikeb]

/root is the profile folder for the root admin

/home is the place for other users in linux land (which to me spot is a poor mans user profile but as you see there was a debate)

reusing names for different meanings is a fun way to confuse
eg

/ = root (of the filesystem)
/root = root (profile)
/home = user profile folder locations
/mnt/home = mount point for the partition where the puppy files are

Again I just see a standard puppy implentation of /root and see a pile of unrelated clutter...but i am just a simple bunny

In windows document and settings = home (or whatever its called) and all profiles including admin and system are there.... not sure if that makes windows organised.

home = good food and a warm bed (in my book)
organized = something that would be nice
puppy standard = making it as ugly as possible


Obviously this post is a waste of time but thanks for the fun

mike

[unicorn316386]

/root is the profile folder for the root admin

Ah thank you. I can see why user/root and user/spot (Windows style) or something else might make more sense now.

reusing names for different meanings is a fun way to confuse

Haha, I definitely agree! Trying to talk to someone about "root" or go to "root" can have at least 3 meanings in Linux.

[mikeb]

Yes as a wrote I did always wonder why its not /home/root and /home/fred and so on.

I believe historically its because such folders where different partitions .... linux likes to get around

/home in otherwords was a dedicated partition for all profiles and /root just for the admin who occasionally popped in for a tweak and as such is considered a special system profile only..small and fluffy since he would be playing the command line.

Also hard drives were the size of a PC for 10MB of storage ... and noisy too

mike

[unicorn316386]

mikeb, what are you thoughts on this one?

fido is another name for a dog, and is a full non-root login account, as you would get in any other Linux distro. With one peculiarity, it's home directory is /root (which may indeed seem very peculiar to you, but there is a reason for it!). As with other distros, you would use 'su' or 'sudo' to perform administrator activities.

[mikeb]

Didn't see the reason for it there... If i remember fido was a brief encounter.

Mike

[jamesbond]

mikeb, what are you thoughts on this one?

fido is another name for a dog, and is a full non-root login account, as you would get in any other Linux distro. With one peculiarity, it's home directory is /root (which may indeed seem very peculiar to you, but there is a reason for it!). As with other distros, you would use 'su' or 'sudo' to perform administrator activities.

Spot is debatable. Fido is not. It is totally indefensible. I will not speak further

[Smithy]

.

[mikeb]

Ah missed reply and thanks for the image

As it happens a multiuser pup no longer needs exec xwin to avoid a shutdown loop. I assume its due to not dangling off /etc/profile

Perhaps user Rover or Butch might give all this running as non root a more macho appeal... but then what are we hiding from?

Mike