Re: Deleting /var/cache/*
On Tue, Sep 03, 2002 at 10:34:23PM -0400, Duncan Findlay wrote:
> I deleted /var/cache/* today to free up some space on my /var
> partition. However, instead of applications re-creating the files as I
> expected, I recieved a bunch of error messages.
> apt/apt-get refused to do anything until I manually created the
> directory /var/cache/apt/archives/partial
[snip]
> Sure, these errors are relatively simple to fix, but I am wondering if
> they are bugs. So before I file them as such, I'd like to know is it a
> requirement of using /var/cache that directories and files be
> automatically re-created?
>
> According to FHS 5.2:
>
> Files located under /var/cache may be expired in an application
> specific manner, by the system administrator, or both. The application
> should always be able to recover from manual deletion of these files
> (generally because of a disk space shortage). No other requirements
> are made on the data format of the cache directories.
I think the key word is "files". As you say it doesn't talk about about
directories, for good reason since it's an awful lot of work. you'd have to
replace:
Look for cache file
If not, go the long way
with:
Look for cache file
If not, check for parent directory
If not there, try to create it
If fails, check for parent directory
etc...
Ofcourse, it could just do system("mkdir -p /var/cache/whatever/dir/it/is")
everytime it wants to open a file but that would be inefficient.
> True, the FHS does not specifically say that directories have to be
> recreated, but I would consider it a bug if they aren't. Anyone agree?
Maybe in a maintainence script somewhere. IIRC squid needs to create a whole
bunch of directories for it's cache before it will start up. It does this
when you install it.
So no, I don't agree.
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/
> There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that can do binary
> arithmetic and those that can't.
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