On 08/31/2010 09:08 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 08:24:30PM -0400, Leam Hall wrote:
Fedora curently steps outside of convention. What I'm advocating is returning to them. You're right that the /usr filesystem is somewhat less critical to server boot and control that /bin and /sbin. However. the applications that the server hosts, like apache and sendmail, should not be there.
Leam, Fedora follows the convention established in the FHS. Vendor-provided packages (that's us) are managed by RPM and install to the standard hierarchy. Third-party packages install in /opt. This is absolutely the correct approach for an integrated distro, and with modern package management tools there's little disadvantage to it.
Matt,
Fedora packages third-party apps like Apache. So your point is taken as it supports what I've been saying. ;)
And if we're talking about giving up RPM, that's a pretty drastic deviation from Fedora and Fedora's history. Unless a lot of though and work were put into doing it right, we'd probably end up reinventing the wheel, lumpily. Something else might be done with multiple RPM databases, but that's also a lot of refactoring, and probably the wrong tool for the job.
No, not giving up RPM. But fixing the SRPMs so that the third party stuff gets installed in /opt.
With isolation you don't have to worry about filesystem space consumption, about changing the OS packages and hoping the upgrade didn't whack the application's files anywhere, or about trying to recover from a bad crash and remembering what all goes where at 3AM.
This isolation idea also goes against several other core Fedora packaging rules, like using system libraries in preference to bundled ones.
Until those system libraries have an application dependancy that precludes OS upgrade. I agree that the application should use a system bit if the system bit is in the OS core itself. However, if the application needs libXYZ and we don't package libXYZ in the core then they can keep their own versions and their own coherency.
The other point I'm hoping to get across is that just because a Fedora rule has been made doesn't mean it's the best answer for mixed environments. Fedora rules so far seem pretty desktop centric and RH-Linux myopic. Most of the SysAdmins I know work with 3-5 different OS's, 2-4 versions of each, a few applicance OS versions, and take care of applications 'cause the developers don't have a clue. The simpler we can make that job for them the more valuable Fedora Server would be, to me.
Your idea may have merit, but it's really not a match for Fedora Server.
If there's consensus on the latter, that's fine. I have not heard that though, nor have I really heard anything that convinces me /opt and separate filesystems are not the way to go. If you can convince me, great! It means you've been able to help me learn more.
Leam