Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Eric Sandall <eric AT sandall.us>]

Quoting Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>:
> Hi,
> 
> Something from the fhs-discuss mailing list:
> There has been a lot of discussion recently about the /srv and /media
> directories specified in the beta of the fhs 2.3.
> You can find the fhs 2.3 beta here
> http://www.samba.org/~cyeoh/fhs-2.3-beta.pdf
> 
> A (very) short overview:
> /mnt <=> /media issue:
> Basically /mnt shouldn't be used at all for submounts (/mnt/cdrom,
> /mnt/floppy, ...). The proposed replacement for this is /media/<drive>.
> /mnt should be left empty for emergency/temporary mounts by the admin.
> 
> /srv:
> This directory should be the default data directory for server programs
> (httpd, ftpd, ...). Packages installed by the distribution should put
> their demo data or basic skeleton data in the respective subdirectory of
> /srv (/srv/www, /srv/ftp). Nothing that exists there that the user has
> changed should be overwritten.
> 
> 
> To start our discussion about it, i like the idea of /srv and am not
> sure about /media. /srv seems like a good idea, allowing the admin to
> have a seperate partition for all server data, making it easy to find
> the data after first install and having a standard place for all server
> type spells to put their data.
> About /media and /mnt, i prefer /mnt/cdrom, for the simple reason that
> i've always used this (and tab completion will be harder if two
> directories in / start with 'm').
> 
> If we can reach a consensus during the next week i'll gladly forward our
> preferences to the fhs-discuss list.

[Long version, for the short version, jump to the end above the signature ;)]

Normally, I don't mind change (I use this distro, don't I ;)), but in this 
case,
I'm against all of those. Why not just leave it as is? All (or almost) the
distros support the current format, no one has problems, I haven't met anyone
yet who got confused by '/mnt' and I prefere to have all of my non-system 
(like
my Windows drive, my Windows data drive, CD-ROMs, etc.) mounted there. I 
/hate/
clutter in my '/' directory, it should be sparse (unlike Windows').

As for /srv/, wtf? We all know that packages go into /usr, and if you don't 
know
which packages of yours are server packages, what the hell (sorry) are you
doing using a computer? Also, isn't /var for data (even though our packages 
put
it under /usr/share, except for the databases and a few others, but things 
like
apache*, horde, and such)?

All in all, I think most of the FHS changes are just so they can look like
they're making "Progress" (yes, with a capital "P") for other people. Things
have to change to make P, just look at M$, they change their layout/GUI's all
the time and say it's "new" and "improved", when it's just a little more 
stable
(generally), a bit slower, and has some new drivers (while losing others). I
see no reason to add to this setup. If we're going to start changing our
filesystem layout, we should all just start using the GNOME Storage[0] system,
which looks like a pretty cool idea, and forsake muddying (sp?) the current
hierarchy just so it looks like we're doing something.

Having standards is nice and all, but they shouldn't be changed without a 
really
good reason (oh yeah, my media is in /media, now would that be my CD-ROM, or 
my
OGG files? I'd say the later makes more sense).

Just in case, note that I'm not angry at anyone, just voicing my opinion on 
what
I think of changing the FHS, at least for the aforementioned changes. :)

[Short version, for the long version, jump to the top, under the replied
message]

Votes (in order of preference, minus those I find unacceptable ;):

/media:
1. /mnt/cdrom
2. /cdrom
3. No change

/srv
1. Reject
2. Other: WTH were you thinking and why can't you keep track of the packages 
you
installed?

-sandalle

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Eric Sandall                     |  Source Mage GNU/Linux Developer
eric AT sandall.us                  |  http://www.sourcemage.org/
http://eric.sandall.us/          |  SysAdmin @ Inst. Shock Physics @ WSU
http://counter.li.org/  #196285  |  http://www.shock.wsu.edu/

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