Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) compliancy?

[James Ralston]

On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, Russell Vincent wrote:
> I have taken over the admin of many news servers with INN splattered
> around the system in ways similar to FHS and everytime I tear my
> hair out and rebuild the system from scratch, installing INN into
> /news.

But "ways similar to FHS" is not the same thing as "following the
FHS".  The point of the FHS is to have one standard, instead of
umpteen similar ones that no one can keep straight.

I wouldn't want to deal with a whole bunch of quasi-FHS systems,
either.  That's why, when I build and deploy something, I either splat
it into its own directory hierarchy (/opt/blah, /var/blah, whatever),
or I follow the FHS to the letter.

That is the main reason I brought this topic up--as INN currently
stands, you don't really have a choice to install following the FHS to
the letter.  Thankfully, there seems to be no opposition to the minor
modifications that will make it possible to install following the FHS
to the letter.

On Sat, 12 Aug 2000, Dan Merillat wrote:
> If you're serious about usenet, you're going to be compiling the
> thing by hand and not packaging it.

We're going to have to agree to disagree, here.  I've been down the
"compile and install things by hand" road before.  Nowadays, if I'm
serious about ANYTHING, it's going to be packaged and managed.
Period.  The only exceptions are pieces of software that are too big
and complicated to package, and I try to avoid such software as much
as I can.

Rather than having a protracted discussion that's not appropriate for
this mailing list, I will simply say that this is the school of
infrastructure management to which I adhere:

    http://www.cert.org/safari/

I was a member of the unix infrastructure group at the University of
Pittsburgh from 1993 to 1999, which was the genesis of SAFARI.  I can
say flat-out that we would not have survived without it.

James