Re: [gentoo-user] why does revdep-rebuild object to mounting /var on /mnt/var ?

On Mon, Sep 09 2013, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> On 10/09/2013 00:26, gottlieb@×××.edu wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 09 2013, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 1:51 PM,  <gottlieb@×××.edu> wrote:
>>>> In fstab I have
>>>>   /dev/vg/var  /mnt/var  ext4  defaults  0 2
>>>> I also have
>>>>   lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Aug 31 16:13 /var -> mnt/var
>>>>
>>>> This has worked ok but revdep-rebuild is not happy
>>>
>>> I think it's the symlink the thing that is making revdep-rebuild
>>> unhappy. Have you tried to bind mount /mnt/var into /var?
>>>
>>> mount -o bind /mnt/var /var
>>
>> Works great.  Thanks.  To make it permanent I put
>>     /mnt/var     /var      ext4     bind       0 0
>> right under
>>     /dev/vg/var  /mnt/var  ext4     defaults   0 2
>> in /etc/fstab
>
> I'm curious as to why you do that, I can't see any benefit at all.
>
> The "var" filesystem is an LV and is only useful if it is mounted at
> /var where packages expect it to be. Why add the extra complexity  of
> mounting it somewhere else and then bind mounting it to the pnly place
> it can be useful?

An old habit/belief that mounts go in /mnt.  Since both revdep-rebuild
and you believe this is a bad habit, I now mount directly on /var /opt.

> There's rules of thumb about this that will always work:
>
> No object in /tmp can be expected to survive successive invocations of
> the program that created the object, and never survive a reboot;
> No object in /var/tmp can be expected to survive a reboot
>
> The best place for temp files, ironically, is ~

I set tmpwatch and wipe_tmp so that files survive in /tmp and /var/tmp
for a month.

I don't like ~ for temp files since on some, admittedly rare, occasions
I actually use the gnome gui file manager and don't want a huge ~.  I
have long ago created ~/tmp (also cleaned after a month by tmpwatch) so
the only problem is breaking the habit of placing short-term files in
/tmp instead of ~/tmp.

I realize that habit is bad for my (system's) health, but still find it
hard to break.  I shall try again. Perhaps this is very mild form of
what intelligent smokers feel :-).

allan