Chris's Wiki :: blog/unix/UsrLocalOrigin Commentshttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/UsrLocalOrigin?atomcommentsDWiki2008-04-04T02:24:53ZRecent comments in Chris's Wiki :: blog/unix/UsrLocalOrigin.By Chris Siebenmann on /blog/unix/UsrLocalOrigintag:CSpace:blog/unix/UsrLocalOrigin:009ea068342c543b685982565128a188a2dab260Chris Siebenmann<div class="wikitext"><p>I'll agree that in general the pendulum has (thankfully) swung the other
way for <code>/usr/local</code> on modern systems (although I see that Ubuntu still
'conveniently' dumps a bunch of program-based subdirectories there).
By now, perhaps I am just unduly nervous about it because I lived through
the era of overly clever vendors.</p>
<p>(This is part of the department of belated replies.)</p>
</div>2008-04-04T02:24:53ZFrom 128.100.48.224 on /blog/unix/UsrLocalOrigintag:CSpace:blog/unix/UsrLocalOrigin:afcbd7ab2d23f3aaee1cccea36d38ed77a0ab7c3From 128.100.48.224<div class="wikitext"><p>man filesystem in Solaris adds</p>
<ul><li>/usr/local</li>
</ul>
<p>"Not part of the SVR4-based Solaris distribution. The
/usr directory is exclusively for software bundled with
the Solaris operating system. If needed for storing
machine-local add-on software, create the directory
/opt/local and make /usr/local a symbolic link to
/opt/local. The /opt directory or filesystem is for
storing add-on software to the system."</p>
<p>(a lofs mount should be better than a symbolic link)</p>
<p>Some people forget that a OS upgrade could wipe out /usr/local and you would lose your programs. We still have tons of stuff in /usr/local from when we used to compile everything from source. We just make sure /usr/local is on a separate partition (NFS mounted read-only).</p>
<p>O.</p>
</div>2008-02-08T16:53:56ZFrom 74.195.239.157 on /blog/unix/UsrLocalOrigintag:CSpace:blog/unix/UsrLocalOrigin:0932fb03f4ac78146a7d2085900d3bddd7d35d6bFrom 74.195.239.157<div class="wikitext"><p>Well, I was going to comment, but Steve said exactly what I was going to. So... me, too.</p>
<p>Random</p>
</div>2008-02-08T15:41:28ZFrom 76.201.5.251 on /blog/unix/UsrLocalOrigintag:CSpace:blog/unix/UsrLocalOrigin:6ef86875e29e374eb6e5d4e00cfdd44d02b3565eFrom 76.201.5.251<div class="wikitext"><p>That problem seems to have been resolved, at least in Linux. On every distro I've used (Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu), distro-provided packages install into /usr and /usr/share, and packages I compile myself usually install into /usr/local. Third-party binaries usually put themselves into /opt.</p>
<p>Without regard for whether this scheme respects the meaning of share, local, and opt, it works well.</p>
<p>--Steve McKay</p>
</div>2008-02-08T13:32:20Z