On 16/04/2007, at 22:58, Louis Guillaume wrote:

> Johnny C. Lam wrote:
>> Geert Hendrickx wrote:
>>> I personally put it under ${VARBASE}/db, usually.
>>
>> hier(7) on NetBSD says:
>>
>> /var/    multi-purpose log, temporary, transient, and spool files
>>
>> That doesn't sound at all like what a database should be.
>
> I understand that there has been a lot of discussion in the past
> regarding what goes where and hier(7) is supposed to have at least  
> some
> of the answers.
>
> But hier(7) doesn't explicitly cover where things like databases  
> and web
> sites should go. Maybe that should change.
>
> I'm curious regarding the history of /var. Doesn't "var" stand for
> "variable", or "things that change"? In which case database data would
> be included?

I've indistinctly placed such data in /var or /home, depending on the  
partitioning scheme of the specific machine and... my mood ;-)  At  
the moment, I think that /var is more suitable, even in hier(7) does  
not mention this explicitly.  But if using /var, maybe we should  
"standarize" the layout within it for pkgsrc packages; the contents  
of that directory differ among systems.

Also, some systems (IIRC, Debian and possible Fedora Core, to mention  
some) seem to have a "new" directory, /srv, which seems to fulfill  
this purpose.  Or at least that's what I deduce from its name, "a  
home for servers".

${PREFIX} is, IMVHO, plain wrong.  Ideally /usr should be ro- 
mountable, and placing variable data in it breaks this.  We should  
strive to allow this on an install using defaults.  And again, FWIW,  
Debian does great efforts to put variable data out of /usr or /etc.

-- 
Julio M. Merino Vidal <jmmv84@gmail.com>