Re: Preferred Installation/Data Directories

Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Apr 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
>
>> Why put "active" data under /usr? Ever since user data was moved to
>> home,
>> /usr has only had system stuff in it. Or is that still a viable BSDism?
>
> Good question, Ron! But, in a multiuser system with many users of the
> database, in whose /home directory will you put the data?
>
> Since /usr/local, /opt, and similar filesystems are for local interest
> stuff, they make ideal data storage areas. Neither is affected by
> distribution upgrades so the data are safe there.
>

According to the FHS (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html):

"/usr is shareable, read-only data. That means that /usr should be
shareable between various FHS-compliant hosts and must not be written
to. Any information that is host-specific or varies with time is stored
elsewhere."

"/var contains variable data files. This includes spool directories and
files, administrative and logging data, and transient and temporary files."

This suggests that var is a 'better' place for the database files from
this perspective, since /usr should be mountable read-only when not
doing system administration.

Interestingly, I just noticed that the FHS also specifies a different
top-level directory that I'd never heard of before that could be even
more suitable (again, in this perspective):

"/srv contains site-specific data which is served by this system."

> Rich
>