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 >
