[vdr] Filesystem hierachy standard patch needs review.

[Gero]

On Monday 03 September 2012 - 15:42:04, Ludwig Nussel wrote:
> So nine years ago when I started packaging vdr for SUSE ...

Sorry, but Suse is not known for doing things right :(
... and they don't care much about system quality.

> Even though vdr may update some of the files there itself I still
> think they belong to /etc to make sure they are included in backups by
> default.

FHS says about /etc:
"The /etc hierarchy contains configuration files. A "configuration file" is a 
local file used to control the operation of a program; it must be static and 
cannot be an executable binary."

Keep you eyes on "it must be static"!

You could learn from debian systems, where the stuff in /etc is really static. 
Even with vdr.
Vdr's databases reside in /var/lib/vdr where they are changeable by intention.
The databases are linked to /etc.
So the content from /etc (the links to vdr-databases) is static, but the 
content of the databases is not.
Its not that good as if the vdr would have divided the setup into static and 
non-static configuration, but it obeys the rules.
See http://wiki.debian.org/ReadonlyRoot for advantages of that aproach.

Regarding backup:
If you allow your backup application to follow links and save the original, 
the databases will be saved.

But even better:
Teach your SUSE-users to save /var/lib 
I believe, from backup point of view, /var/lib has the same or even higher 
importance to get saved, than /etc

> I decided to use /var/spool/video (could have been /var/spool/vdr
> too).

That's a good point!

Lots of VDR-users use VDR as a standalone system and for those systems 
/var/spool might be more appropriate than /srv

/srv is right, if the VDR-machine offers the recordings like a NAS or 
MediaServer, so in case the VDR is a backend machine, it might be better to 
symlink /var/spool/video to /srv/video or the like.


kind regards

Gero