Very Computer

by **Li Ying B** » Fri, 07 Mar 2003 23:16:53

Please answer this question? What is Sun's preferred directory:
/usr/local/bin or /opt/local ?

by **Ben Taylo** » Fri, 07 Mar 2003 23:40:38

> Please answer this question? What is Sun's preferred directory:
> /usr/local/bin or /opt/local ?

It's all personal preference.

I don't use /usr/local because I work in production environments
and don't want anything that's been compiled or packaged in the
/usr file system. It makes auditing easier. Also, /opt is there
for "optional" software. Doesn't really matter if it's a third
party package or free software.

/usr/local is a default for most free software, because it needs
to default somewhere. So when you build software, you should
consider where you want to put it for, and figure out what the
maintenance is going to be like. The argument that just because
the default is /usr/local people should use it is, IMNSHO, a
bit lazy and short sighted. PATH variables are very easy to
maintain.

Another reason to not use the /usr file system is you can keep
the / and /usr file system fairly static. I can't count the
times that folks on the newsgroups have been baffled by the
fact that they've run out of space in / because of all the
free software (typically from sunfreeware.com) they've loaded.
Then they have to move /usr/local to some other partition,
and that creates even more headache. As someone mentioned before,
even if you symlink /usr/local to /export/usr/local or /export/local,
sometimes the packages delete the /usr/local symlink, and then
drop all the code back into the directory /usr/local, basically
roaching the rest of your symlink'd /usr/local.

Just my .02,

Ben

by **Oscar del Ri** » Fri, 07 Mar 2003 23:54:28

Quote:> Another reason to not use the /usr file system is you can keep
> the / and /usr file system fairly static. I can't count the
> times that folks on the newsgroups have been baffled by the
> fact that they've run out of space in / because of all the
> free software (typically from sunfreeware.com) they've loaded.

just as many posters complaining that /opt or / is full
after installing packages in /opt/

by **Dennis Clark** » Sat, 08 Mar 2003 00:24:27

I find it hard to believe that people are still so backwards as to use the
old fashioned "sunfreeware.com" approach to things anyway. Yes you can go
through the motions of downloading a package from them and then doing a
package install and then figuring out if you have all the dependencies and
then downloading them and then installing them and then linking things from
/usr/local to /opt/sfw or whereever it happens to land. Very backwards and
old fashioned.

The simple solution is to see how Phil Brown has things going at
www.blastwave.org and simply use the pkg-get tool. By running pkg-get with
the option -a you get a list of ALL the software that is available on the net.
Then you just pick what you want and run pkg-get -i packagename. That is it.
No downloading and then installing and then figuring out what you are
missing. The software is installed and usually running. All you need is a
binary for wget in your path and pkg-get goes out and gets uh well, the
package and then installs everything for you. It is the slickest and quickest
way to get a web server going with Apache and mod_ssl all done for you. Then,
here is the cool part, you can link /usr/local to point to /opt/csw and
everything just runs. Sounds like a microsoft ad but the difference is that
the software blows in without needing to do much of anything.

The software gets installed in /opt/csw which is where the blastwave crew
puts it. The sunfreeware people make you work for everything and then dump it
in either /usr/local or /opt/sfw. You can use the software companion CD and
get stuff that is out of date in a number of places.

Why bother ... I created an Apache website with mod_ssl in less than ten
minutes ( more like five ) by running pkg-get -i apache.

Dennis Clarke

by **Greg Menk** » Sat, 08 Mar 2003 01:06:13

> I find it hard to believe that people are still so backwards as to use the
> old fashioned "sunfreeware.com" approach to things anyway. Yes you can go
> through the motions of downloading a package from them and then doing a
> package install and then figuring out if you have all the dependencies and
> then downloading them and then installing them and then linking things from
> /usr/local to /opt/sfw or whereever it happens to land. Very backwards and
> old fashioned.

> The simple solution is to see how Phil Brown has things going at
> www.blastwave.org and simply use the pkg-get tool. By running pkg-get with
> the option -a you get a list of ALL the software that is available on the net.
> Then you just pick what you want and run pkg-get -i packagename. That is it.
> No downloading and then installing and then figuring out what you are
> missing. The software is installed and usually running. All you need is a
> binary for wget in your path and pkg-get goes out and gets uh well, the
> package and then installs everything for you. It is the slickest and quickest
> way to get a web server going with Apache and mod_ssl all done for you. Then,
> here is the cool part, you can link /usr/local to point to /opt/csw and
> everything just runs. Sounds like a microsoft ad but the difference is that
> the software blows in without needing to do much of anything.

> The software gets installed in /opt/csw which is where the blastwave crew
> puts it. The sunfreeware people make you work for everything and then dump it
> in either /usr/local or /opt/sfw. You can use the software companion CD and
> get stuff that is out of date in a number of places.

If you like doing things that way, fine- but I quite like how
Sunfreeware does things. I find package tools that try to be smart
and do-all sometimes aren't either one. When they break, often
they'll inflict nonexistent/nonsensical dependencies on you and will
sometimes not provide a means to tell it to just Do It And Shut Up.

Sunfreeware's advantage for me is its nice and simple. Just download
what you want and install it, no fuss, no fiddling. I personally
don't give a hoot about Apache or any other webservers, so its nice
for grabbing particular programs, or bootstrapping a GNU environment
on a new box.

Gregm

by **Philip Bro** » Sat, 08 Mar 2003 03:06:39

Quote:>...
>If you like doing things that way, fine- but I quite like how
>Sunfreeware does things. I find package tools that try to be smart
>and do-all sometimes aren't either one. When they break, often
>they'll inflict nonexistent/nonsensical dependencies on you and will
>sometimes not provide a means to tell it to just Do It And Shut Up.

Sounds like you're complaining about packages getting out of date, with
"nonexistent dependancies". That is a problem all over, not just a
dependancies issue
:-)

The dependancies for blastwave packages are *real* depencancies. If you
dont have the other packages installed, the software you are interested in
*wont* *run*. So you may as well let pkg-get grab the dependancies for you.

Quote:>Sunfreeware's advantage for me is its nice and simple. Just download
>what you want and install it, no fuss, no fiddling.

That's funny, because some sunfreeware.com packages take quite a BIT of
fiddling, last I checked, when conceptually, the software shouldnt need it
if there was a decent preinstall script.

Quote:>I personally
>don't give a hoot about Apache or any other webservers, so its nice
>for grabbing particular programs, or bootstrapping a GNU environment
>on a new box.

I'm not sure how the "I dont give a hoot about Apache" is relevant.
But I believe that blastwave has the more up to date "GNU environment"
compared to either sunfreeware.com or sun's companion CD.

--
http://www.blastwave.org/ for solaris pre-packaged binaries with pkg-get
Organized by the author of pkg-get
[Trim the no-bots from my address to reply to me by email!]

http://www.spamlaws.com/state/ca1.html

by **Andrew Gabri** » Sat, 08 Mar 2003 03:30:24

Quote:> Please answer this question? What is Sun's preferred directory:
> /usr/local/bin or /opt/local ?

Not /usr/local/bin - that contravenes the SVR4 filesystem layout
rules. Nothing in /usr is local - it is exclusively for the bundled
parts of the operating system.

/opt/local is fine, but it's not a specific recommendation by Sun.
SVR4 didn't admit to the possibility that software would be produced
by any company not registered on the stock exchange, and expects the
first 4 letters of directories under /opt to start with the
company's stock exchange ticket symbol (e.g. SUNW for Sun). It has
become a sort of convention to use lower case where the first 4
letters are not a stock exchange ticket symbol, and as such,
/opt/local is fine. However, add-on applications should go into /opt;
that is exactly what it was created for.

I sometimes do ln -s ../opt/local /usr/local to steer busted
applications to the right place.

--
Andrew Gabriel
Consultant Software Engineer

by **Ben Taylo** » Sat, 08 Mar 2003 06:17:02

>> Another reason to not use the /usr file system is you can keep
>> the / and /usr file system fairly static. I can't count the
>> times that folks on the newsgroups have been baffled by the
>> fact that they've run out of space in / because of all the
>> free software (typically from sunfreeware.com) they've loaded.

> just as many posters complaining that /opt or / is full
> after installing packages in /opt/

Forward thinking when you are installing an OS is part of
being a systems administrator, even if it is on a home
machine.

If you think you can just blindly install packages on Solaris
without reprocusions, you've obviously spent too much time in
a single disk windoze world.

by **Thomas Glanzman** » Sat, 08 Mar 2003 06:24:58

Quote:> If you think you can just blindly install packages on Solaris
> without reprocusions, you've obviously spent too much time in
> a single disk windoze world.

I am using Solaris on a single disk. Is something wronge with that?

by **Thomas Glanzman** » Sat, 08 Mar 2003 07:36:43

Quote:>> > If you think you can just blindly install packages on Solaris
>> > without reprocusions, you've obviously spent too much time in
>> > a single disk windoze world.
>> I am using Solaris on a single disk. Is something wronge with that?
> Not really on a home system or a engineer's desktop. If it's any sort
> of server for software, how are you going to expand the partition layout
> when your users ask for yet another software package?

Software packages comes via NFS.

Quote:> The point is that PRODUCTION systems that require management approval
> for downtime need to be setup to optimize the time they're up. If you
> run out of space on /opt or / and need to re-partition, that's an "oops,
> I didn't think of that".

No problem for me and it shouldn't be a problems for others using bind
mounts or symlinks, even if they didn't think about the problem before.

Quote:> If this isn't your environment, fine. There's nothing wrong with
> running a Solaris system that got everything in / on a single disk. It
> makes updating stuff easy. But if it's a server where /var could fill
> up, your system will hang.

Thats true, but I have mechanisms that monitor disk space all the time.

Let's stop now. I was just upset about "you've obviously spent too much
time in a single disk windoze world".

by **Oscar del Ri** » Sat, 08 Mar 2003 07:38:21

>>> Another reason to not use the /usr file system is you can keep
>>> the / and /usr file system fairly static. I can't count the
>>> times that folks on the newsgroups have been baffled by the
>>> fact that they've run out of space in / because of all the
>>> free software (typically from sunfreeware.com) they've loaded.

>> just as many posters complaining that /opt or / is full
>> after installing packages in /opt/

> Forward thinking when you are installing an OS is part of
> being a systems administrator, even if it is on a home
> machine.

> If you think you can just blindly install packages on Solaris
> without reprocusions, you've obviously spent too much time in
> a single disk windoze world.

Exactly my point. You cannot blame sunfreeware
packages or csw or sunw packages for your lack of planning.
If you like /opt or /usr/local, go ahead, just make sure
you allocated enough space, preferably on a separate disk
partition (even if you have a single disk like many workstations do).

by **Rev. Don Koo** » Sat, 08 Mar 2003 08:13:06

>> Please answer this question? What is Sun's preferred directory:
>> /usr/local/bin or /opt/local ?

> It's all personal preference.

> I don't use /usr/local because I work in production environments
> and don't want anything that's been compiled or packaged in the
> /usr file system.

Just mount a separate filesystem to "/usr/local" and then it won't be
"in the /usr file system".

Hope this helps,
Don

--
*************************** Q: How many frenchmen does it take
* Rev. Don McDonald, SCNA * to defend Paris?
* Baltimore, MD * A: No one knows, it's never been tried.
***************************
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/oldno7/TheFrench.mpg
Reluctant Yamaha YZF-R1 Owner

by **Oscar del Ri** » Sat, 08 Mar 2003 08:00:44

Quote:> /usr/local is a default for most free software, because it needs
> to default somewhere.

It is actually mentioned in the GNU Coding Standards:
http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_54.html

prefix:
A prefix used in constructing the default values of the variables listed
below. The default value of prefix should be `/usr/local'...

by **Rev. Don Koo** » Sat, 08 Mar 2003 08:19:53

> I find it hard to believe that people are still so backwards as to use the
> old fashioned "sunfreeware.com" approach to things anyway. Yes you can go
> through the motions of downloading a package from them and then doing a
> package install and then figuring out if you have all the dependencies and
> then downloading them and then installing them and then linking things from
> /usr/local to /opt/sfw or whereever it happens to land. Very backwards and
> old fashioned.

> The simple solution is to see how Phil Brown has things going at
> www.blastwave.org and simply use the pkg-get tool. By running pkg-get with
> the option -a you get a list of ALL the software that is available on the net.
> Then you just pick what you want and run pkg-get -i packagename. That is it.
> No downloading and then installing and then figuring out what you are
> missing. The software is installed and usually running. All you need is a
> binary for wget in your path and pkg-get goes out and gets uh well, the
> package and then installs everything for you. It is the slickest and quickest
> way to get a web server going with Apache and mod_ssl all done for you. Then,
> here is the cool part, you can link /usr/local to point to /opt/csw and
> everything just runs. Sounds like a microsoft ad but the difference is that
> the software blows in without needing to do much of anything.

> The software gets installed in /opt/csw which is where the blastwave crew
> puts it. The sunfreeware people make you work for everything and then dump it
> in either /usr/local or /opt/sfw. You can use the software companion CD and
> get stuff that is out of date in a number of places.

> Why bother ... I created an Apache website with mod_ssl in less than ten
> minutes ( more like five ) by running pkg-get -i apache.

why didn't you just compile it yourself?

--
*************************** Q: How many frenchmen does it take
* Rev. Don McDonald, SCNA * to defend Paris?
* Baltimore, MD * A: No one knows, it's never been tried.
***************************
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/oldno7/TheFrench.mpg
Reluctant Yamaha YZF-R1 Owner

by **Rev. Don Koo** » Sat, 08 Mar 2003 08:22:23

>>Please answer this question? What is Sun's preferred directory:
>>/usr/local/bin or /opt/local ?
> Not /usr/local/bin - that contravenes the SVR4 filesystem layout
> rules. Nothing in /usr is local - it is exclusively for the bundled
> parts of the operating system.

Yes, make sure you have to fiddle with every package you install so
that it doesn't go in "/usr/local". After all that is time well spent
to avoid breaking arbitrary and capricious "SVR4 filesystem layout rules".

Hope this helps,
Don

--
*************************** Q: How many frenchmen does it take
* Rev. Don McDonald, SCNA * to defend Paris?
* Baltimore, MD * A: No one knows, it's never been tried.
***************************
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/oldno7/TheFrench.mpg
Reluctant Yamaha YZF-R1 Owner

Very Computer

What is Sun's preferred directory: /usr/local/bin or /opt/local ?