usr
User. The "/usr" directory hierarchy on Unix systems. Once
upon a time, in the early days of Unix, this area actually
held users' home directories and files. Since these tend to
expand much faster than system files, /usr would be mounted on
the biggest disk on the system. The root directory, "/" in
contrast, contains only what is needed to boot the kernel,
after which /usr and other disks could be mounted as part of
the multi-user start-up process.
/usr has been used as the "everything else" area, with many
"system" files such as compiler libraries (/usr/include,
/usr/lib), utilty programs (/usr/bin, /usr/ucb), games
(/usr/games), local additions (/usr/local), manuals
(/usr/man), temporary files and queues for various daemons
(/usr/spool). These optional extras have grown in size as
Unix has evolved and disks have dropped in price. Under later
versions of SunOS, the user files have fled /usr altogether
for a new "/home" partition and temporary files have moved
to "/var". This allows /usr to be mounted read-only with some
gain in security and performance since access times are not
updated for files on read-only file systems.
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U.S. Robotics, Inc.
USR
US Robotics
A US modem manufacturer.
<http://usr.com/>.
<ftp://ftp.usr.com/>.
Finger: usr.com.
E-mail: usr.com>, usr.com> (USA and Canada),
usr.com>, usr.com> (Europe),
usr.com> (other).
(1995-03-14)
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