On Sun, Jul 25, 1999 at 05:32:42PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> I see that the policy manual has been changed (s3.1) to require FHS
> compliance rather than FSSTND compliance.
>
> I'd like to make two proposals:
>
> * That we make an exception for /var/state. Ie, we mandate that
> packages us /var/lib. This change has no purpose and will only be
> hassle for us.
Not necessary. FHS 2.1 due out RSN (Dan reads this list I believe)
renames /var/state back to /var/lib... Reason being that it'd be a PITA
for most non-trivial programs to reliably have things moved around like
that. /var/lib keeps the /var/state layout which is cleaner than /var/lib
under the FSSTND.
> * That we make an exception for /var/mail. Same as before, but last I
> heard there were rumours that FHS were going to abandon /var/mail.
> When I was last at an LSB meeting all the other distributions wanted
> /var/spool/mail back.
FHS has abandoned /var/lib but not /var/mail in 2.1. It looked like they
were going to abandon it, but they then decided to simply say that it
could be a symlink to some other place if necessary. My suggestion is
that we do not move /var/spool/mail on existing systems and instead simply
create a symlink from /var/mail and call it good. /var/mail should be the
directory on a new system, though the compatibility symlink should be
created (not maintained by any package)
This allows the move to /var/mail to happen without seriously hindering
backward compatibility and allows us to continue to use software which
doesn't use /var/mail as long as we like. It also doesn't interfere with
the element of least surprise for a sysadmin who has /var/spool/mail
mounted as a partition.
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian GNU/Linux developer
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<Silvrbear> Oxymorons? I saw one yesterday - the pamphlet on "Taco Bell
Nutritional Information"
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