[Lxc-users] Proposal for an FHS-compliant default guest filesystem location

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Mon, 2010-11-01 at 08:40 -0500, Serge E. Hallyn wrote: 
> Quoting Walter Stanish (walter.stanish at saffrondigital.com):
> > http://lxc.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=lxc/lxc;a=commitdiff_plain;h=c01d62f21b21ba6c2b8b78ab3c2b37cc8f8fd265
> 
> This commit only moves the location of the 'templates', which are
> just scripts that install a guest fs.  It doesn't/shouldn't move
> the location of the actual guest fs's.
> 
> > Therefore I humbly propose:
> >  - the establishment of /var/lib/lxc as the default top-level
> > directory for guest filesystems

> AFAICS we are still using /var/cache/lxc right now.  Which I like
> better than /var/lib/lxc.  If it has 'lib' in the pathname, it should
> have libraries!

Actually, I would beg to differ with you on that since it's in /var and
that's where system applications write and store data.  Libraries
(meaning linked libraries, dynamic and static) should be under /usr
or /lib since they are not generally written to.  You could have
libraries in there, I suppose, but I would not consider that the safest
place for them and most of what you find there is not libraries, unless
you mean "libraries" in the sense of "libraries of files" as in a
"collection of files", which is another sense of the word.  But then,
that would certainly be an applicable location for the machine
configuration files as now.

Mailman is another example application which keeps most of its python
code under /usr/lib/mailman while longer term storage of lists,
archives, and databases are stored in /var/lib/mailman.

Samba is another fine example of this and, in fact, we (the Samba team)
and the distros moved away from using /var/cache/samba for things like
the tdb databases and storing extraneous data such as Windows device
drivers the server can serve up.

Personally, I like and use /srv/lxc for my VMs and don't see any
conflict with the FHS.  It is, after all, a site local configuration
sort of thing that gets set up when you build the images and comprises,
potentially, entire FHS-like sub hierarchies for the VMs.

> >   (eg: /var/lib/lxc/<guestname>)
> >  - all use of /etc/lxc/<guestname>/rootfs should be considered deprecated

For the cgroup mount point, I've been using /var/lib/cgroup and I think
(believe) that was the consensus of a discussion quite some time ago and
is what's recommended in some howtos.  For the container mount-points
and storage of the registered configuration files(s), /var/lib/lxc works
just fine and would be in agreement with the strategy if /var/lib/cgroup
for the cgroups, IMHO.

> I don't see that being used on my system, or in the git commit
> you cited.

> -serge

Regards,
Mike
-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
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