Linux FHS – Where to Put Stuff: /srv vs /var

linux

My web development experience has started with Fedora and RHEL but I'm transitioning to Ubuntu. In Fedora/RHEL, the default seems to be using the /var folder while Ubuntu uses /srv.

Is there any reason to use one over the other and where does the line split? (It confused me so much that until very recently, I thought /srv was /svr for server/service)

My main concern deals with two types of folders

default www and ftp directories
specific application folders like:
1. samba shares (possibly grouped under a smb folder)
2. web applications (should these go in www folder, or do can I do a symlink to its own directory like "___/www/wordpress" -> "/srv/wordpress")

I'm looking for best practice, industry standards, and qualitative reasons for which approach is best (or at least why its favored).

Best Answer

This stems from LSB which says "/var contains variable data files. This includes spool directories and files, administrative and logging data, and transient and temporary files." but says this for /srv: "/srv contains site-specific data which is served by this system."

SuSE was one of the first disto's that I used that kept webroot's in /srv - typically Debian/Ubuntu/RHEL use /var/www - but also be aware that if you install a web application using yum or apt then they will likely end up in /usr/share. Also the packaging guidelines for Fedora say that a "package, once installed and configured by a user, can use /srv as a location for data. The package simply must not do this out of the box".

On balanced reflection I would say keep to /var/www - or you can do both by making /var/www a symlink to /srv/www. I know that on oracle RDBMS systems that I build I often create /u01 /u02 etc as symlinks to /home/oracle. The reason for this is that many DBA's expect to find things in /u01 and many others expect /home/oracle. The same can be said of Sysadmins in general - some will instinctively look in /var/www and some in /srv/www while others like myself will grep the apache config for the DocumentRoot.

Hope this provides some guidance for you.

Related Solutions

Linux Installation – Should Linux Applications Be Installed in /var or /opt?

The standard for these issues is the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. It's a rather big document. Basically (and very roughly), the standard paths on Linux are:

/bin & /sbin are for vital programs for the OS, sbin being for administrators only ;
/usr/bin & /usr/sbin are for not vital programs, sbin being for administrators only ;
/var is for living data for programs. It can be cache data, spool data, temporary data (unless it's in /tmp, which is wiped at every reboot), etc. ;
/usr/local is for locally installed programs. Typically, it hosts programs that follow the standards but were not packaged for the OS, but rather installed manually by the administrator (using for example ./configure && make && make install) as well as administrator scripts ;
/opt is for programs that are not packaged and don't follow the standards. You'd just put all the libraries there together with the program. It's often a quick & dirty solution, but it can also be used for programs that are made by yourself and for which you wish to have a specific path. You can make your own path (e.g. /opt/yourcompany) within it, and in this case you are encouraged to register it as part of the standard paths ;
/etc should not contain programs, but rather configurations.

If your programs are specific to the services provided by the service, /srv can also be a good location for them. For example, I prefer to use /srv/www for websites rather than /var/www to make sure the directory will only contain data I added myself, and nothing that comes from software packages.

There are some differences between distributions. For example, RedHat systems use libexec directories when Debian/Ubuntu systems don't.

The FHS is mostly used by Linux distributions (I actually don't know any other OS that really complies to it). Other Unix systems don't follow it. For example, BSD systems tend to use /usr/local for packaged programs, which is not the case for Linux. Solaris has very different standard paths.

I strongly encourage you to read the FHS document I linked above if you wish to know more about this.

Linux – Where should I put the svn repository

No, you're right that you shouldn't have the repository inside its own working copy. What you can do is use an Alias directive (if you're using Apache) to map the directory /usr/local/svn/svn_repo to the URL path /svn.

Alias /svn/ /usr/local/svn/svn_repo/

This way when you direct your browser to http://linux-server/svn, Apache will show you the contents of /usr/local/svn/svn_repo, but that directory won't actually be inside /var/www. You will also need to enable Apache to serve files from that directory, so put this in your Apache configuration file:

<Directory /usr/local/svn/svn_repo>
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
    Options +Indexes
</Directory>

Note that you should also configure Apache with WebDAV so that you can access the repository over HTTP (otherwise Apache will show you the raw contents of the repository files, which won't be particularly easy on the eyes).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux Installation – Should Linux Applications Be Installed in /var or /opt?

Linux – Where should I put the svn repository

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