[nycbug-talk] Cool read about history of /bin /usr/bin/

[Pete Wright]

On 3/26/12 12:12 PM, Charles Sprickman wrote:
>
>
> On Mar 26, 2012, at 2:59 PM, Henry M wrote:
>
>> I always like reading where certain Unix "formalities" came from.
>>
>> "Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split"
>>
>> http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html
>
> The history is interesting, but his "get off my lawn" rant about 
> carrying this historical cruft is a prime example of why I generally 
> don't enjoy the way things are done in the linux world.  There's a 
> good rebuttal to his point a few messages further on.  In short, 
> putting stuff essential for booting on the root fs still has practical 
> uses.
>
> On a tangent, can anyone explain "/var/lib" in the linux world?  That 
> one has always perplexed me.
>

yea - i've always had "issues" with how gnu systems use /var/lib as well 
as how external binaries and libs are installed in /usr as opposed to 
/usr/local.  it's actually just not gnu systems either - i know 
cassandra for example uses /var/lib/cassandra/ is its defualt datastore 
location.

after reading the unix filesystem heirarchy over the years the closest 
reasoning for the use of /var/lib for DB, www-data and the like is that 
technically these files are related to the state of running 
processes...dunno...it's probably just easier to admit defeat after all 
these years :/

c.f. http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#THEVARHIERARCHY

-pete

-- 
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
www.nomadlogic.org