(I posted this to my mastodon account then realized that it should be here since it's long-form.)

The discussion of historical Unix file system layout recently came up in a chat so I thought I'd share it here as well. I started in 1985, so can't speak to what came earlier than that. This is based on memory so should not be considered authoritative.

In BSD 4.2 we had / (aka 'root), SWAP, /tmp, /usr, /usr/local (optional, perhaps), and some place for user home directories like /users or /homes. (Or, if you were broken, /mnt). If you had multiple drives user homes frequently went on one of them instead.

There were binaries in /etc (ifconfig being the main one I remember, might also have been shells), as well as /bin & /sbin (which were on /) and /usr/bin & /usr/sbin. /sbin was for things like fsck(8) which weren't for "ordinary users".

On-disk layout was usually something like /, SWAP, /usr, ... The idea was to make / and SWAP as fast as possible (they were on the speediest part of the disk) then put the rest where it could be useful.

There were fun things like /usr/tmp and /usr/log that were writable, so just about every filesystem on the host was RW.

We kept /tmp separate so it couldn't fill / and break things. Likewise /usr was separate because of /usr/tmp and /usr/log having the potential to fill up and break things.

The big thing: disks were small, expensive, and slow so the stuff in / was *just enough* to boot the host. /sbin and /bin had important binaries you'd need to start the system and fix things if mounts failed (e.g. fsck(8)) but nothing else - that all went into /usr/bin.

Eventually Sun wanted to do the "diskless node" thing so they created /var and moved all the writable filesystems out of /usr which could then be common to all hosts.

Over time, as disks got cheaper and larger, someone moved everything out of /bin into /usr/bin, leaving a link behind for us Old Farts.

Then someone else didn't like the idea of /usr/local so created /opt (I think that's Sun's fault as well but won't swear to it).

So we wound up with /, SWAP, /usr (later /usr just became part of /), /var, /homes-type-filesystem, /tmp, /opt, and optional filesystems like /usr/local.

I hope this top-of-the-head recollection was sufficiently understandable and at least slightly interesting.

When I was 13 and just starting to explore my sexuality I read a book called "Everything you wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask."

For the most part it was the usual 1960s-1970s era sex-ed book but the chapter on homosexuality was ... criminal.

It was *incredibly* homophobic. No hope, everything was terrible. It said things like queers will molest anyone they can, spend their lives masturbating in the back of porn theaters, etc etc etc. Based on that description I *knew* that couldn't possibly be me so I must not have been gay, right?

It set me back *years* in acceptance of who I am. It wasn't like I had any counter-examples. This was the late 1970s and we had no good role models.

This is one of the reasons I'm out now, so kids can see someone who is successful and not living the way that book says. Being a counter example is very important to me.

When the book was reprinted in the early 2000s, they updated everything else but left that chapter pretty much intact.

*If* you share this book with a younger or questioning person, make damn sure you discuss the reality Vs what that book says. Better yet, don't share the book with anyone else.

If this is true I won't be able to shop at Trader Joe's anymore. :/

https://www.kuow.org/stories/employees-say-capitol-hill-trader-joe-s-closed-store-as-retaliation-for-protest-participation

I've assembled my album of photos for Faces of Pride 2019. I hope you find them enjoyable. Please feel free to comment and share.

I have a lot of saved up vacation I should use and not a lot of money I can use to do so. Staycations just don't work for me, I need to be away from the house (and preferably away from the city) because otherwise I get bord, log in, and start doing work.

I'm looking for inexpensive travel options. Doesn't have to be right now but sometime in 2013 would be good.

Ordinarily this would be a year I'd go to Australia for a SAGE-AU conference but they're not doing those anymore (sadness). Last time I had this much vacation banked I went to Oslo for 6 weeks as a visitor at Oslo University College's masters in system administration program (an option I'm considering again). It would be interesting to do something I haven't done before, though.

Any suggestions?

As a gay man coming of age in the early-mid 1980s (and out of the closet in the very late 80s) AIDS was The Thing that was always there, always present, always lurking. It was the question that dared not be asked but that _had_ to be asked. It was something you had to be cognizant of and always take precautions against.

The first time I was tested it took 3 weeks to get the result. Those were, without a doubt, the most miserable three weeks of my life. I spent the entire time worried and wondering and pondering the "what if?"s. What would I do? Who, if anyone, in my family would I tell? Could I even face my family? Sure, I was always careful but with something like that can you ever be careful _enough_? I still have those fears every time I am tested, though thankfully it now only takes about 20 minutes to get the initial results.

Like everyone, I've lost people to it along the way. There are holes in my life that will never be filled. There are holes I don't even know about because I never met the person who would/could have been significant to me.

As treatment gets better and life expectancy gets higher I sense a lot of complacency not only in the GBLT world but also in the straight world. People seem to think it doesn't matter anymore.

It. Matters. It matters more than I can ever hope to express.

Do yourself and everyone you care for ... and those you will care about in the future a favor. Learn about it. Behave responsibly.

Castle's DSL has been down since 17:37 last night. I just got off the phone after one of those very frustrating|annoying|embarrasing-for-the-tech "did you reboot it" phone calls. Now they've scheduled a technician for a home visit tomorrow morning. Email to my castle address isn't going to be seen until after my connection is back. If you need to reach me best to call my google voice number or email my gmail.com address.

I have invites. Let me know if you want one.