Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 15:19:48 -0400 From: Ken Smith <kensmith@cse.Buffalo.EDU> To: Brooks Davis <brooks@one-eyed-alien.net> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: upgrade questions 4.10 -> 5-stable Message-ID: <20040923191947.GA102@electra.cse.Buffalo.EDU> In-Reply-To: <20040923184037.GE25699@odin.ac.hmc.edu> References: <20040920211231.89904.qmail@web53808.mail.yahoo.com> <200409201753.38308.so14k@so14k.com> <414F9C6D.9020709@corp.grupos.com.br> <20040921041017.GA963@tomcat.kitchenlab.org> <127205680265.20040920222835@takeda.tk> <20040921154116.GB36705@tomcat.kitchenlab.org> <12247499375.20040921100534@takeda.tk> <20040923155419.GB53845@tomcat.kitchenlab.org> <56421822718.20040923103059@takeda.tk> <20040923184037.GE25699@odin.ac.hmc.edu>
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On Thu, Sep 23, 2004 at 11:40:37AM -0700, Brooks Davis wrote:
> By design /var contains things that change frequently during system
> operation, not things that are unimportant. Thing in /var/run and
> /var/tmp are required to be things you can lose, but many of the rest of
> the directories are of crucial importance.
[ From an ancient dinosaur ... ]
I believe the original motivation for /var came from the days when
big servers were where most stuff was stored, including the bulk
of the system files (some machines actually ran with no disks at
all, some ran with tiny drives with just enough space for a minimal
root filesystem plus swap space). The design goal was to set things
up so /usr could be shared among lots of machines, and except for
the machine that actually had it on the local drive all machines
sharing it would mount it read-only. /var was where stuff that
could not be shared and/or needed to be written to went. So you
see spool files (mail, printer, etc.) go there, log files go there,
cron job definitions go there, etc.
--
Ken Smith
- From there to here, from here to | kensmith@cse.buffalo.edu
there, funny things are everywhere. |
- Theodore Geisel |
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