[svlug] RHL 5.2

[Javilk]

> Nothing in the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard even remotely suggests 
> putting the system HTML tree under /home (or even mentions that tree,
> for that matter.)  The notion that it's the httpd "user's" home directory 
> is pretty ridiculous.  (Does that "user" get a public_html subtree and
> mail spool, too?)

     As a professional webmaster, I would say that /home is a good place
for it, as it is something you want to preserve between installations, and
maintain frequent backups of; while /usr, if not complete with /usr/local
on a separate drive, is wiped clean during installs. (Though not
upgrades.)  Given that, one might argue that /home/httpd/conf is a good
place for the configuration files, though.  Yet these are more subject to
attack than /etc, since /etc might more likely be on a write protected
drive.   Since my /home directory is a different drive from the /etc
directory, I back up the /etc/httpd/conf directory to the /home/httd/conf
directory.

> That directory branch would be classified per FHS as shareable and 
> (arguably) variable.  If you consider it to be essentially "system 
> configuration" files, logic might thus suggest under /etc or /usr/local/etc.
> That is what I do, although it'd actually probably have been more FHS-like
> to put it under /var.

     Putting it under /var encourages wiping it clean even when one does
NOT do a complete install, and that would have you restoring a lot of
files for some Very Irate users, and having word spread in the user
community that you are an incompetent ISP.  And if you didn't word your
contracts properly, you would also likely be facing a few lawyers for loss
of income if there were any commercial pages in that tree.

> I think their FHS compliance is better than most, but not such that
> it may be used as a hand-wave to excuse some obvious Redhat-isms.

    It is difficult to make absolute assignments, because people use
things in different ways.  However, if I were your boss, and you insisted
on putting it in /var and treating it as variable junk, I would give
serious thought as to whether you were suitable for that kind of work.

     (This is NOT to say that _I_ am anywhere NEAR competent as a systems
administrator!  I an NOT!  But, as a webmaster, I do know what my clients
do when their work is wiped away -- read their contracts and think about
hiring a lawyer.  And after that, surf for other ISP's and web hosting
services.  Having been through this myself, I provide independent backups
of ISP based pages for some of my clients.) 

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