On Fri, Jun 06, 2008 at 12:54:26AM +0200, André Warnier wrote: > Mark Thomas wrote: >> André Warnier wrote: >>> (This is Linux Debian Etch, with Tomcat5.5 out of the box, standard >>> apt-get install.) >> Without knowing if/how 5.5.x has been mangled by the packaging process it >> is going to be difficult to help you. The packaging process tends to play >> all sorts of games with file locations and default configurations. > > Yes, it mangles quite a bit. Tomcat5.5 is split (as files and links) > between /etc/tomcat5.5, /var/lib/tomcat5.5, and /usr/share/tomcat5.5. > I suppose the Debian packagers have their very good and smart reasons for > doing this, but it doesn't make searching config files easier.
They do. On Linux, for example, see the FileSystem Standard or whatever it's called now. On a production system, /usr might be mounted read-only, so you can't keep log files or scratch stuff (like auto-expanded .war files) there. /usr might not even be physically connected to the box; you might have racks of machines all mounting a common /usr image from some NFS server. /usr is a great place to put stuff which is changed only by replacing the whole file when the system is not available to end users, like executables and JARs. Since each host may require different settings, configuration data (like server.xml and context descriptor files) go in /etc so they can be customized per-host. Stuff that has to be writable should be in /var, which had better be mounted read-write or nearly every program on the box will break. /var is the place for state data or scratch storage -- stuff created at runtime or, if we must, empty structured files built by the installation process. Things just copied from the install kit don't belong here. If log files are hidden away outside of /var/log, the sysadmin will mutter something unprintable and either move or symlink them there. /var/log might be on its own volume, so that applications won't fail when they go to write scratch files and find that the logs have eaten up all the available space. If /var/log fills up, we lose a few data that have a 1:10000 chance of being interesting; if /var fills up, we lose customers because nothing works for them. So, that's why some people insist on separating files that have different lifetime, scope, and access requirements. -- Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Typically when a software vendor says that a product is "intuitive" he means the exact opposite.
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