On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 10:14:44AM -0500, Ted Unangst wrote: > On Sat, Nov 19, 2011, Carson Chittom wrote: > > Thomas de Grivel <tho...@lowh.net> writes: > > > >> Hi, > >> > >> 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/... ? > >> > >> From hier(7) : > >>> /usr/ Contains the majority of user utilities and applications. > >>> share/ Architecture independent data files. > >>> man/ Manual pages. > >> > >> Is it really a manual page ? > > > > Shouldn't the index of manual pages be with the manual pages? > > Should /etc/passwd be stored in /home instead? > > I think a readonly (or NFS shared) /usr is supposed to work, so anything > that's regularly written should be in /var. That's what /var is for, > after all.
Under normal circumstances, /usr/share/man/whatis.db is NOT written to: makewhatis(8) does not even try to write the file if it didn't change. That particular problem only triggers after you upgrade your system if /usr is mounted read-only. That's one reason it's done at the end of make build: once you're done, you can remount /usr read-only.
