NYCPHP Meetup

[Leam Hall]

Ajai Khattri wrote:
> On Sun, 5 Jul 2009, Matt Juszczak wrote:
> 
>> I see FreeBSD do this (separate user-installed packages into /usr/local), 
>> but Linux always seems to install extra packages and user-generated 
>> content in /usr as the root.  IE: mysql & apache.  Always wondered why the 
>> separation was never there.
> 
> 
> Why would they? If you built the package yourself then /usr/local makes 
> sense. If you're installing a package provided by the distro vendor then 
> they will merge it with the rest of the system.

/usr/local as an application spot pre-dates *BSD and Linux being in the 
production mainstream. For commercial unix, /opt is where optional 
packages go. Simply put, if it's an application you're making available 
off the server, it goes in /opt. Even stuff that works *on* the server 
goes in /opt if the server can get along without it. This is probably 
due to the legacy idea of small disk drives. /usr was often mounted 
read-only so that it was less likely to get messed with. /opt could have 
it's own drive, and since business applications were demanding large 
space they could pay for the large space while the system partitions 
stayed small.

Of course, this is a simplification. Some unix versions put odd things 
in odd places, like user home directories in /usr, and system 
applications in /etc...

Leam