Review question about /var/log/* files.

John Dennis jdennis at redhat.com
Fri Feb 9 17:07:03 UTC 2007


On Fri, 2007-02-09 at 16:37 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-02-09 at 10:21 -0500, John Dennis wrote:
> > Once you establish a need for independent log files then FHS requires
> > independent directories owned by the service.
> Hmm, that's news to me - Any pointer?
> 
> All I can find[1] is this:
> 
> /var/log : Log files and directories
> Purpose
> This directory contains miscellaneous log files. Most logs must be
> written to this directory or an appropriate subdirectory.

'Requires' was too strong, here are the reasons it's recommended, some
of it from FHS, some as a consequence of SELinux.

FHS requires independent package subdirs for /var/lib, /var/opt.

FHS recommends independent package subdirs
for /etc, /etc/opt, /opt, /usr/share, /var/run, /usr/lib

The spirit of FHS is if a package has more than a few files it should be
locating those files in subdirs owned by the package.

You are absolutely correct, in the case of /var/log it is not mandated a
per package subdir be used but when the entire FHS is taken as a whole
you can see it follows as a recommendation.

Also, SELinux policy prefers package files be located in directories
owned by the package as it makes file labeling easier to specify and
maintain.
-- 
John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com>

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