Bug#679751: please clarify package account and home directory location in policy
Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages@zugschlus.de> writes:
> Unfortunately, Policy is not clear on where a system accounts' "home
> directory" is to be placed. Thus, a maintainer trying to fix the "bug"
> that a home directory was placed *gasp* in /home is risking to do it
> wrong again when choosing between /etc/package(/home) and
> /var/(lib|cache|spool)/package(/home).
It's going to depend considerably on the package, isn't it? I don't think
Policy can make any one recommendation, although /var/lib works for many
packages and fits the FHS requirements.
> In quite a few packages, the system user's "home" directory might
> accumulate dotfiles and/or ssh (keys|known_hosts) files, so this
> decision is not quite easy to take.
If those files are intended to be persistant, then either /etc/package or
/var/lib/package are pretty much your only options. The semantics of the
other locations you mention don't allow for those sorts of files.
> Sorry, but I cannot suggest Policy language since I don't know how do to
> things right and I still believe that /home is a valid place for home
> directories.
/home is definitely unacceptable for the reasons stated in the FHS, for
the same reasons that /srv would be unacceptable (and for other reasons as
well, such as the fact that /home is often an NFS-mounted file system or
otherwise unavailable for package installation). QA is entirely correct
on that score.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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