D J Bernstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Why should _he_ care about symbolic links? He's the vendor! He makes
> more money by breaking cross-platform compatibility, locking users in,
> than by preserving cross-platform compatibility.
Dan, the location of the qmail binaries and configuration files is *not*
just vendors trying to make proprietary file systems. The notion of an
NFS-mounted /usr that contains all static binaries and only putting files
that change during the normal operation of the system into /var is a very
common and widespread way of doing things, supported by systems as widely
varied as Solaris, Linux, and IRIX. They haven't all gotten it right yet,
but it's a design goal for a lot of people.
And the Linux file system standard is *not* Red Hat's creation; it's a
seperate, cross-distribution effort, looks fairly similar to the BSD
layout, and qmail is definitely not compliant with it.
You have good reasons for your stance. Fine. Personally, I like having
qmail in /var/qmail just like I install INN entirely under /var/news; I
buy your reasoning for why it's a good idea to put a fairly complex
subsystem in its own separate directory structure. But they also have
good arguments for the other side, and dismissing it as vendors trying to
lock people into a proprietary system isn't going to convince anyone.
It's simply not true.
--
Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
