Subject: Re: HylaFAX woes
To: Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil>
From: Chris G Demetriou <Chris_G_Demetriou@LAGAVULIN.PDL.CS.CMU.EDU>
List: current-users
Date: 03/11/1995 20:01:38
>>> Didn't look very closely, did you?
>>
>>I'm not sure if it matters; binaries don't belong in /var/spool.
> 
>Why not?  (Not meaning to get into a flame war, just curious).

among other reasons (one or two of which are elucidated below),
because /var is for "multi-purpose log, temporary, transient, and
spool files", and none of those categories covers "spooler binaries."

>Well, in this case, the backends are completely useless unless you're on
>the fax server (they consist of the programs that actually talk to the modems).

Umm...  so, what you're saying is that in an environment where
multiple machines share /usr/local, it's unreasonable for more than
one of them to have a FAX-modem board?  8-)

The point is, there's no reason that the binaries are
machine-specific, other than they require a certain piece of hardware.
By that argument, one should install all X servers in /var...  8-)

>Of course, nobody's forcing you to take the defaults - you can always compile
>it yourself and configure it wherever you want to.

sure.  but one of the points of doing binary packages is to present a
reasonable set of defaults.  and that layout isn't standard, nor (in
my opinion) is it particularly reasonable.


cgd