On Tue, Sep 03, 2002 at 10:34:23PM -0400, Duncan Findlay wrote: > I deleted /var/cache/* today to free up some space on my /var > partition. However, instead of applications re-creating the files as I > expected, I recieved a bunch of error messages.
> apt/apt-get refused to do anything until I manually created the > directory /var/cache/apt/archives/partial [snip] > Sure, these errors are relatively simple to fix, but I am wondering if > they are bugs. So before I file them as such, I'd like to know is it a > requirement of using /var/cache that directories and files be > automatically re-created? > > According to FHS 5.2: > > Files located under /var/cache may be expired in an application > specific manner, by the system administrator, or both. The application > should always be able to recover from manual deletion of these files > (generally because of a disk space shortage). No other requirements > are made on the data format of the cache directories. I think the key word is "files". As you say it doesn't talk about about directories, for good reason since it's an awful lot of work. you'd have to replace: Look for cache file If not, go the long way with: Look for cache file If not, check for parent directory If not there, try to create it If fails, check for parent directory etc... Ofcourse, it could just do system("mkdir -p /var/cache/whatever/dir/it/is") everytime it wants to open a file but that would be inefficient. > True, the FHS does not specifically say that directories have to be > recreated, but I would consider it a bug if they aren't. Anyone agree? Maybe in a maintainence script somewhere. IIRC squid needs to create a whole bunch of directories for it's cache before it will start up. It does this when you install it. So no, I don't agree. -- Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/ > There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that can do binary > arithmetic and those that can't.