Subject: File Structure

From: Brian Curtis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 11:26:41 -0500

I know this is a pretty generic question but I would like your opinions or
thoughts.

I am looking for good placement for my shared files on my server.  I have 5
hard drives set up as a raid, in the past I have always had my system on one
drive, a swap on another and the files on the rest of the drives.  Because I
don't know enough about Linux yet to know which folders are system folders,
where should I put my shared folders on the Server.  I heard somewhere that
/var was the place.

Brian Curtis

Information Technology Manager
Red-Wire
Kelliher Samets Volk
802.862.8261

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From: Wes Yates <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 12:02:35 -0500

>I know this is a pretty generic question but I would like your 
>opinions or thoughts.
>
>I am looking for good placement for my shared files on my server.  I 
>have 5 hard drives set up as a raid, in the past I have always had 
>my system on one drive, a swap on another and the files on the rest 
>of the drives.  Because I don't know enough about Linux yet to know 
>which folders are system folders, where should I put my shared 
>folders on the Server.  I heard somewhere that /var was the place.
>
>Brian Curtis
>

I have mine under /home which is a partition on its own. Helios I 
think put theirs in /usr/people/... on Irix.

I think you can put it just about anywhere, so long as security isn't 
that great a deal (/boot and /etc are bad ideas.) I wouldn't put the 
shares in /tmp <grin>

/boot, /root, /lib, /proc, /dev, /etc, /sbin, /bin, /tmp, /usr/bin, 
/usr/sbin, or any combinations of the above aren't good ideas. My 
suggestion is to look at your partitions and see where the most 
likely space is.

/var is usually used for process IDs, lock files, messages and logs, 
but I guess I could be used...

I use /home because thats where most of my users home directories 
are. You could also create a mount point for the raid (my old server 
had a /raid dir), mount the raid and use that. if the "system" 
disk(s) go out, at least the raid should survive. Our IRIX server had 
a 5GB main hard drive with a 72GB UW-SCSI raid attached. The raid was 
mounted at /raid. Never gave us a problem.

-wes yates

-- 

-Wes Yates
[email-masked]
wesyates.homeip.net

"Of course, you realize this means war."
-B. Bunny

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From: jeff <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 12:13:56 -0500

Brian Curtis wrote:

> I know this is a pretty generic question but I would like your opinions 
> or thoughts.
> 
> have 5 hard drives set up as a raid, in the past I have always had my 
> system on one drive, a swap on another and the files on the rest of the 
> drives.  Because I don't know enough about Linux yet to know which 
> folders are system folders, where should I put my shared folders on the 
> Server.  I heard somewhere that /var was the place.

I put mine in /home. It mainly has to do with your partitioning.

/etc is for configuration files
/bin and /sbin are for binaries
/boot is for boot information
/dev is for filesystem devices
/lib is for system libraries
/home is for user information and home directories
/root is the root user's home directory
/tmp is for temporary files
/var is for log files, databases, spools, etc
/opt is for "optional" packages (not used in some Linux distributions)
/usr is for user binaries, documentation, etc...

Of course, as there are differences between distributions, your mileage 
may vary.

Jeff

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From: Jamie Flournoy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 09:21:41 -0800

The "File Hierarchy Standard" tries to address the issue of different
things going in different directories on various *nix flavors. It
doesn't say anything about file sharing, though.

I've been using a scheme a friend told me about: /disks/internal1,
/disks/internal2, /disks/external1, etc. to give your non-system disks a
place to live that is more physical than logical. Symlinks can take care
of the logical to physical mapping; for example; /usr/local/ is on the
system disk but /usr/local/pub, which is the big shared volume, is a
symlink to /disks/internal3/pub. It used to live on the same disk as
/usr/local/ but outgrew it, so I moved it to the Big New Disk mounted at
/disks/internal3 and used a symlink to make everything keep working.

Home dirs are shared too; this is just for things shared to groups.

Maybe a better scheme would be /share/foo for shared volume "foo"?
Dunno. /usr/local works so far.

Brian Curtis wrote:

> system on one drive, a swap on another and the files on the rest of
> the drives.  Because I don't know enough about Linux yet to know which
> folders are system folders, where should I put my shared folders on
> the Server.  I heard somewhere that /var was the place.
>
> Brian Curtis
>

---

From: Thomas Schierle <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 18:57:44 +0100

On 2001-12-12 18:21 +0100, Jamie Flournoy <[email-masked]> wrote:

> place to live that is more physical than logical.

I don't have the documentation at hand right now, but I believe
creating additional "vanilla" directories at the root level is
discouraged by the FHS.

In addition, locating shares in /home adds to user convenience --
navigation back and forth between /home/<userdirctories> and
/home/sharepoint is a snap: cd ../sharepoint, cd ../username, done.

-- 
Thomas Schierle, Munich, Germany

PGP key [DSS/DH] 0xA23CDA1D available at various public key servers