[RFC] /var versus /srv

[Richi Plana]

On Fri, 2007-09-21 at 16:45 +0200, Farkas Levente wrote:
> i agree with you about /srv, but not with the above. do you have any
> system with real users? why don't you allow cron jobs for normal users???

It's important to take this discussion in context with FHS and their
intended audience and machines for their intended purposes. For the most
part, FHS discusses /srv in the context of machines that act as servers.

As with machines that act as servers, multi-user desktops should keep
their data together. In this case, people's data should be kept
together. Instead of in /src, however, mail and cron information should
be placed inside their $HOME directories. What does FHS say about
multi-user systems?

The point is to make backing up machines easier by finding one common
point for each service (whether it's mail, web or multi-user desktop).
Keeping some things in /var means you either have to know which
subdirectories in /var to back-up AS WELL AS user home directories, or
you back up the whole /var directory, unneeded data and all.

So again, it's important to separate files used by the system and files
used by the services, and it would go a long way for systems
administration to group them together.
--

Richi Plana