On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 04:31:57PM +0100, Ingo Schwarze wrote: > Hi Thomas, > > Thomas de Grivel wrote on Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 03:32:03PM +0100: > > > From weekly output : > > >> Rebuilding whatis databases: > >> /usr/libexec/makewhatis: Can't create /usr/share/man/whatis.db: > >> Read-only file system > > > Should not whatis.db be in /var/... ? > > I think you have a point. Specifically, /var/db/man/. > Having cron(8) scripts write to /usr is ugly. > I don't see why mounting /usr readonly should require > disabling makewhatis(8).
I disagree: manpage directories are self-contained. If I add or remove a directory to my man configuration, it shouldn't require a rebuild of the database for other directories. Hence having a whatis.db per-man directory root. If you want to move those to /var/db/man or something, you'd better be prepared to have database file names that depend on the root directory being used.
