Status and outlook of LSB and FHS compliance of Fedora.
Aaron Bennett
aaron.bennett at olin.edu
Fri Jun 4 21:22:28 UTC 2004
David Kewley wrote:
>
>>What about /opt? From the FHS 2.3 document
>>http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#PURPOSE14 , it's seems that
>>all of Fedora's optional packages need to install into /opt/<packagename>.
>>
>>
>
>I don't read it this way. The FHS 2.3 says, "/opt is reserved for the
>installation of add-on application software packages." Nowhere does it say
>anything equivalent to, "add-on application software packages must be
>installed in /opt." There's a big difference there, one that I'm willing to
>assume is intentional. :)
>
>
Trust me here -- if I'm setting up a straw man, it's because it needs to
be burned...
How do you reconcile the thought that /opt an optional place to install
add-on software packages with what the FHS says about /usr/local?
> /usr/local : Local hierarchy
>
>
> Purpose
>
> The /usr/local hierarchy is for use by the system administrator when
> installing software locally. It needs to be safe from being
> overwritten when the system software is updated. It may be used for
> programs and data that are shareable amongst a group of hosts, but not
> found in /usr.
>
> Locally installed software must be placed within /usr/local rather
> than /usr unless it is being installed to replace or upgrade software
> in /usr. [27] <http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#FTN.AEN1450>
>
>
>
I suppose that could best be read as "/usr/local" is machine specific,
while /opt is exportable and mountable. At least that's how a Solaris
SysAdmin would probably take it. But it's pretty wierd if that's the
case: it's ok to dump stuff into /usr/local/bin , but everything in /opt
needs to be in /opt/<packagename>/bin ? Why?
The best answer I can come up with is that the people at FHS didn't do
any better job of grappling with this then I am. There are two issues:
what is an add-on, and where should it go? I suspect that in RHEL world
-- and you'd have to ask Red Hat RHEL product support for an answer --
anything that is not distributed by Red Hat is an add-on. Here in
Fedora world we have the Fedora Extras repository which is sanctioned by
Red Hat but not distributed or written by them. It's more of a grey
area. What about stuff from livna.org, that according to Red Hat
doesn't officially exist? Is xmms-mp3 and 'add-on'? Or a locally
installed software package?
Those are tough questions.
What I think happened with the FHS is it's trying to be all things to
all systems. There are times when installing everything into /opt is a
good idea. There are times when it's not. There are times when
installing stuff into /svr is the right way to go... and times when it's
not. I think that it's totally valid to have standard, canonical
locations for files. I'm in favor of a Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.
Just not necessarily this one. Whatever one we use, it has got to be
consistent. We can't be moving stuff from /var/apache to /var/httpd to
/svr/httpd to /services/webserver to /services/something else every two
years.
--
Aaron Bennett
UNIX Administrator
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
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