On Sun, 3 Jan 1999, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:

: >  * And no, for me at least, /var/run/*.pid is not a solution, I get rid of
: >  * the annoyig ".pid" parts of the file names as well (it makes a listing
: >  * of /var/run give a nice list of daemons that are running, or should be).
: > 
: > Yes, but then you get fooled by things like dev.db, ld.so.hints and utmp.
: > 
: > The *.pid is nice so you know it's a PID and not something else.
: 
: That was his point. He wants ONLY pids in there, and databases in other
: directories.

It's `far too late' for this now.  /var/run/utmp has been known for quite
some time.  We also have ld.so.hints, dev.db, and even multi-line .pid files
(sendmail.pid) that you have to run `head -1' on, not `cat'.

And there's a whole lot of third party software that knows to name the files
`.pid' - and in turn, I have *never* seen one that didn't suffix it `.pid'
after having the knowledge to put that file in /var/run.

Attempting to move all pidfiles to Yet Another /var directory is a lot of
effort for little gain.  History or no, this is now how we now operate.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)