[fhs-discuss] tighten the use and intention of the "/var" hierarchy

Christoph Anton Mitterer calestyo at scientia.net
Mon May 16 07:20:35 PDT 2011


On Mon, 16 May 2011 13:29:35 +0200, Bruno Cornec <Bruno.Cornec at hp.com>
wrote:
> Exactly. And typically I'd like to avoid backuping /var, except maybe
> /var/spool.  Currently what I *have* to backup is crontab files
> (/var/spool/cron)
> , /var/spool/mail, /var/spool/news, /var/lib/mysql, and /var/www where
> most of the rest is useless from a recovery perspective.
Absolutely! That's also why I suggested to use /srv in many cases e.g. for
databases.


> Moving useful data from /var/spool to /srv/spool or something similar
> would help as we could then just backup the full /srv and avoid /var
> content at all.
I still would keep this temporary/volatile data in /var ... even though
this makes backups more "complex".
Cause typically all this spooling stuff should be there only for a short
period of time, until it's further processed (e.g. handed over to the
printer or to a pop3/imap server).


> For me the real aspect is data separation, filesystem coherency
> (possibility to have one broken such as /var due to logs filling it,
> random temp data written to it, ...) where the other one is more under
> control (backup being part of it).
Agreed.


Cheers,
Chris.


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