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

[Bruno Cornec]

Christoph Anton Mitterer said on Mon, May 16, 2011 at 02:20:35PM +0000:

> > 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).

Well, in reality, news, mail or crontab files are there for long :-(
Of course, this is different for postfix, at or lpd under /var/spool.

I know sysadmins who keep the mailboxes of their users under
/var/spool/mail 
This is then not volatile, at least for the people whose mailbox is
there ;-)

Throughout the years, tools are using /var/spool for different things. I
don't know whether we can influence their choices there.

Bruno.
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