Re: Home directory of PostgreSQL user

[Greg Troxel <gdt%ir.bbn.com@localhost>]

Matthias Scheler <tron%zhadum.org.uk@localhost> writes:

(I'm omitting things which are just a difference of opinion.)

>> Real databases, as opposed to auxiliary data that is needed to run a
>> system, really don't belong in /var,
>
> I disagree. "/var" is hystorically for system data. And that is what
> database tablesa are.

They really aren't "system data".   There's data that belongs to named
users (homedirs), and data that is used to operate the system.   Adding
a database, or a web server, or something like that is really a third
category where the data belongs to a non-human application user
(logically).  Were we using pgsql to store wtmp, it would be system
data.  But that's not how people use it.   For example, most people
running ftp servers don't put everything under /var/ftp.

> LOCALBASE=            /opt/pkg
> PKG_SYSCONFBASE=      /etc/opt/pkg
> VARBASE=              /var/pkg

So I would be far happier with /var/pkg as VARBASE than /var, because it
reduces to 2 (or 3, with PKG_SYSCONFBASE) the set of prefixes that make
up the pkgsrc installation (/var/db/pkg aside).  More importantly, it
keeps all the pkgsrc stuff separate from the base system.



This isn't relevant to the prefix discussion, but postgresql does
support multiple database locations.  That tends to be for advanced used
when one starts worrying about balancing disk IO, etc.