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/usr/local/ ?
/usr/local/ ?
Posted Apr 8, 2004 6:12 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054)Parent article: The User-Accessible Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
What does /home/shared/.system/ provide that /usr/local/ doesn't?
And why stick this stuff in hidden directories?
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/usr/local/ ?
Posted Apr 8, 2004 8:46 UTC (Thu) by alspnost (subscriber, #2763) [Link]
Yes - it strikes me that having a group-writeable /usr/local, and putting select users into an "install" group, is a more elegant solution. That way, the group/user distinction still allows people to install programs that are usable by only themselves, only the group, or everyone....
/usr/local/ ?
Posted Apr 8, 2004 13:08 UTC (Thu) by horen (subscriber, #2514) [Link]
Yes - it strikes me that having a group-writeable /usr/local, and putting select users into an "install" group, is a more elegant solution. That way, the group/user distinction still allows people to install programs that are usable by only themselves, only the group, or everyone....
Yikes! This looks like a job for RBAC
Perhaps getting up-to-speed with SELinux is more mission-critical than many of us would care to admit; or, with the degree-of-complexity it possesses, perhaps creating the appropriate tools for administering it.
OTOH, I really do not want my desktop Linux users to be installing their own software packages. In the US Army, we had a saying: "The two most dangerous people are a Private with a rifle, and a 2LT with a pen." I'd like to add to that a PhD faculty member (w/ or w/o the root password).
/usr/local/ ?
Posted Apr 8, 2004 16:18 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
OTOH, I really do not want my desktop Linux users to be installing their own software packages.Yeah. Whether a malicious program is installed in /usr/local or /home/share/.system doesn't really matter too much; the end result is about the same.
Also
Posted Apr 8, 2004 20:56 UTC (Thu) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]
Give /usr/local the sticky bit so people can't remove or rename otherpeople's software. And mount it nosuid,nosgid so people can't play tricks
with software that runs as them no matter who uses it.
My biggest fear is that this opens the door to spreading malicious
software. There is nothing to stop a user from adding a command named
"cp" which does rm -rf $HOME. Similarly this opens the door to viruses.
In the past they only affected people who already had infected executables
in their home directory or people who used a system where the root user was
running infected executables.
hidden directory
Posted Apr 8, 2004 16:25 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]
And why stick this stuff in hidden directories?
I find that people use hidden files/directories as a means creating another level of directory; i.e. all the dot files in a directory are effectively in a subdirectory so they don't clutter a listing of the main directory.
Frankly, I'd much prefer just to use the one directory hierarchy. It costs one subdirectory entry in a main directory to hide all the files that would otherwise be dot files.
I have taken the matter into my own hands somewhat: My alias for 'ls' includes the --almost-all option. That means I see the dot files even though the package author didn't want me to. I find I am much happier actually seeing all my files.
It does, unfortunately, make my home directory listing uncomfortably large, making me wish we had something like the .config/ standard mentioned in the article.
Don't hide it!
Posted Apr 13, 2004 14:17 UTC (Tue) by mwilck (guest, #1966) [Link]
And why stick this stuff in hidden directories?
Yes that is real nonsense. There are widely-used file managers out there that make it impossible to list hidden files, and there are file manager-writers out there who consider that a feature.