[lsb-discuss] FHS-type question - where to put modifiable data shared by all users?

Jeff Licquia jeff at licquia.org
Wed Apr 22 15:41:01 PDT 2009


David Bruce wrote:
> AFAICT, "localstatedir" is the Autoconf variable that corresponds to
> this role, but it doesn't seem to use quite the same location as
> recommended by the FHS.  Autoconf says it is $prefix/var, that is
> /usr/var or /usr/local/var, neither of which exists on my system.  I
> have a post to the Autoconf list on that particular question.

The autoconf folks are at a different level than the FHS.  Autoconf has 
to be able to deal with Windows, the old-line UNIXes that predate the 
FHS, weird platforms like VMS, etc.  So their default decisions are 
practically guaranteed to not please everybody.

A lot of "legacy" systems won't have /var, which probably explains 
"$prefix/var" as the default.  For a FHS package, you'll almost 
certainly want to override that at package build time.


More information about the lsb-discuss mailing list