On Fri, 18 Oct 2002 17:37:30 +0200 "Nadav Har'El" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Why is /var/www preferred over /usr/lib/www, /usr/share/www, /usr/www, > and so on? It's a matter of taste and philosophy.
Unix/Linux systems allows the administrator almost infinite flexibility, which means you can put almost anything anywhere. Why put device files in /dev? why put temporary files in /tmp and /var/tmp? why put home directories in /home and not scatter them on different partitions? What the FHS tries to encapsulate is some sort of "best known practices" together with the reasoning leading to these practices. For those who don't have the patience to read it in full, man hier(7) gives a brief view of it (which is very similar to any SVR4 Unix: HPUX, Solaris, Irix). > "/var is specified here in order to make it possible to mount /usr > read-only. Everything that once went into /usr that is written to > during system operation (as opposed to installation and software > maintenance) must be in /var." This is the "correct" answer. > ... and CGI > scripts are used to writing their outputs in the same directory as the > script. Whooops! What? If this is the case than those writers should be really reeducated. Have we forgot separating code from data? (BTW: this was the main reason /sbin was splitted from /etc in SVR4 more than 10 years ago). > Or you can forget about the FHS altogether, and just put the www directory > anywhere you want. While the great flexibility of Unix/Linux is a good thing and allows it to be adapted to very diverse scenarious (servers, thin clients, embedded, etc.) The careless (ab)use of this flexibility may quickly lead us all to a new babilonian tower. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." (H. Spencer) ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
