[RFC] /var versus /srv

Richi Plana myfedora at richip.dhs.org
Fri Sep 21 20:32:26 UTC 2007


On Fri, 2007-09-21 at 13:49 -0600, Lamont Peterson wrote:
> I might even go so far as to suggest that Fedora "officially" state
> that the /srv/ directory is meant for stuff you care about (please,
> don't ask me right now for final verbage).

Same thing I've been saying, but it's only now that I realized that I've
been assuming the wrong thing. When I read FHS, in my mind, I was
thinking LSB. So here I was thinking that Fedora was simply following
some guidelines set up by the FSB for its directory hierarchy. Now that
I know that FHS refers to the Fedora Hierarchy Structure, this changes a
few things.

As I said, I thought it referred to an LSB guideline which made me think
Fedora could be flexible with its interpretation and implementation.

Now that I've read up on the FHS, I have to say that it needs reworking
if only because some of the things it states contradict others.

For instance, it states that /srv is for "Data for services provided by
this system". Unfortunately, FHS isn't too comprehensive. It doesn't
separate, for instance, mail services as used by the system from mail
services provided to clients of the server (which could be provided as
one-to-one Unix user to email account or just as a virtual user on top
of the email system). There's a distinction between the two that's being
left to people to argue over.

As I read more of what FHS stipulates, it gives me the impression that
it was designed for a particular use-case scenario (it talks about some
directories being shareable and some not, obviously with a certain
scenario in mind ... traditional Unix).

Personally, I think this discussion should be brought back to FHS and a
recommendation be made that it narrow down its guidelines to first what
is common in all Fedora systems, and if it must add additional uses
(like multi-user desktops, email services, database, web, ftp, DNS, NTP,
etc.) that it tack those on separately and on top of the core filesystem
use.




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