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Suggested release goal: /run



(Please keep me in Cc, I'm not subscribed)

Proposer: Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@debian.org>
Seconder: Michael Biebl <biebl@debian.org>

Currently, /lib/init/rw exists as a place for applications that need
write access early (before $local_fs) to put their data. In addition,
some abuse /dev/shm for this.  A couple of years back, /run was
suggested, but /lib/init/rw ended up being chosen.

However, various upstreams are not using /lib/init/rw, they're more
likely to use hidden directories in /dev, like /dev/.udev and
/dev/.initramfs.  This is both ugly and a violation of the FHS.

Various upstreams seem to now unite under the banner of /run and I
think it would make sense for us to follow suit, see [1] for Lennart
Poettering's mail to the Fedora devel list and [2] for the FHS bug
about it.

I'm therefore proposing the goal of:

- /run should exist as a tmpfs
- /var/run should be a symlink or bind mount of/to /run
- /var/lock should be a symlink/bind mount to /run/lock
- /lib/init/rw should be a symlink/bind mount to /run
- applications are free to use /run as they have previously used
  /var/run.  Applications using /lib/init/rw and /dev/shm are to be
  changed to use /run.

/var/run and /var/lock as tmpfs is already reasonably well supported
since this has been in use in Ubuntu for a while and it's been a
supported (but optional) configuration in Debian for some time.

[1]: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-March/150031.html
[2]: http://bugs.freestandards.org/show_bug.cgi?id=718

Regards,
-- 
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are


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