Where do you store data files?

[Erik Max Francis]

logistix wrote:

> /tmp sounds like a good idea but I'm going to have about 15-20 Megs of
> data.

/tmp is a bad idea if the data is supposed to stick around or is
important.  /tmp is explicitly for temporary (as its name suggests)
data; you've no guarantee that stuff in /tmp will be around
indefinitely.  (On some UNIX systems, for instance, it's a ramdisk, and
its contents go poof when you reboot the machine.)

> I noticed my BSD machine installed apache's files under /var , but I
> think the default version and linux installs attach to the /home
> partition under a subdir that isn't attached to any particular user.

Presumably the place where things are installed should be selectable by
the user.  Somewhere under /var is probably satisfactory for things that
expected to continue running.  A fake user under /home (or whatever the
directory for home is) is occasionally used but strikes me is inelegant.
There shouldn't be any reason that the person using your software
shouldn't decide for themselves where it should go; if they want it to
into /misc/whatever then that should be just fine.  After all, the
person doing the installing is going to know where the best place is
based on the disk space usage of the machine.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, USA / 37 20 N 121 53 W / &tSftDotIotE
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 The official distribution page for the popular Roguelike, Omega.