On Sun, 9 Feb 2003, Caskey Dickson wrote: >On Sun, Feb 09, 2003 at 10:26:58AM -0500, Peter Teichman wrote: >> I would probably go with the latter option, but I'm happy with the >> current solution. /opt doesn't leave any bad taste in my mouth. :) >I prefer packages that go into /usr/local because there exists all the other >directories etc/, var/, usr/, bin/ etc. with all of their well-defined and >expected behavior. As an administrator I know that /etc/<package>/<something> >is where I configure something. If *I* installed it, then everything else >is in /usr/local, if it was packaged by my vendor (RedHat, YellowDog, gentoo, >SuSe, etc.) I need to look in /*. Having do dig around in /opt/<package> and >figure out which of /opt/<package>/conf or /opt/<package>/etc or even the awful >/opt/<package>/control is the right place to manage something such is confusing >and a waste of the precious little time I have for administration tasks. >Assuming that the administrator will 'just remember' where package X likes >to keep its configuration flies in the face of the whole concept of the FHS.
Even though the origin of a package and all its files is under /opt, you are free to symlink the files from /opt to wherever you like to work with them. And the packager can typically do that in an install script. So if your package database breaks and you need to clean out an add-on package, you will always be sure to get it all by removing /opt/<package>. The existing RPM doesn't do this, but it would IMHO be a better (more FHSish) way to do it. It's actually a mistake from my side that the RPM installs xinetd files and the conf file directly in place. >The FHS is a standard, it's acquired huge amounts of support plus eased >many of the administration headaches that have nothing to do with actually >getting something to work. It shouldn't be necessary to use locate and find >to configure a package, and I know that the more FHS compliant a system I'm >managing, the less time I spend managing it. /opt is a historical throwback >that should be marked as a deprecated but documented part of the FHS. >/usr/local does everything /opt does, but better. >C=) That's an opinion for the FHS mailing list to chew on, I guess. I'm rather of the opinion that /opt is for add-on packages that do not belong to the distro, and /usr/local is a playground for the system administrator. Andy -- Andreas Aardal Hanssen | http://www.andreas.hanssen.name/gpg Author of Binc IMAP | Nil desperandum
