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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">GLEP:</th><td class="field-body">20</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Title:</th><td class="field-body">/srv - Services Home Directory Support</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Version:</th><td class="field-body">1.1</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Last-Modified:</th><td class="field-body"><a class="reference" href="http://www.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/xml/htdocs/proj/en/glep/glep-0020.txt?cvsroot=gentoo">2004/02/22 02:09:07</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Author:</th><td class="field-body">Stuart Herbert &lt;stuart&#32;&#97;t&#32;gentoo.org&gt;, Rob Holland &lt;tigger&#32;&#97;t&#32;gentoo.org&gt;</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Status:</th><td class="field-body">Draft</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Type:</th><td class="field-body">Standards Track</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Content-Type:</th><td class="field-body"><a class="reference" href="glep-0002.html">text/x-rst</a></td>
</tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Created:</th><td class="field-body">09-Feb-2004</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Post-History:</th><td class="field-body">21-Feb-2004</td>
</tr>
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<hr />
<div class="contents topic" id="contents">
<p class="topic-title"><a name="contents">Contents</a></p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference" href="#thanks-to" id="id2" name="id2">Thanks To</a></li>
<li><a class="reference" href="#abstract" id="id3" name="id3">Abstract</a></li>
<li><a class="reference" href="#motivation" id="id4" name="id4">Motivation</a></li>
<li><a class="reference" href="#specification" id="id5" name="id5">Specification</a></li>
<li><a class="reference" href="#examples" id="id6" name="id6">Examples</a></li>
<li><a class="reference" href="#rationale" id="id7" name="id7">Rationale</a></li>
<li><a class="reference" href="#implementation" id="id8" name="id8">Implementation</a></li>
<li><a class="reference" href="#backwards-compatibility" id="id9" name="id9">Backwards Compatibility</a></li>
<li><a class="reference" href="#copyright" id="id10" name="id10">Copyright</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="thanks-to">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id2" name="thanks-to">Thanks To</a></h1>
<p>Thanks to Robin H. Johnson (<a class="reference" href="mailto:robbat2&#64;gentoo.org">robbat2&#64;gentoo.org</a>) for his assistance in writing
this GLEP.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="abstract">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id3" name="abstract">Abstract</a></h1>
<p>This GLEP proposes a new root-level directory - /srv - as an optional home
for the data (and sometimes the software too) for software that provides
services.</p>
<p>/srv will be supported via a USE flag.  This gives users the choice
of using a dedicated service home hierarchy or not.</p>
<p>/srv is defined in FHS 2.3, which is part of the upcoming LSB v2.0 release
(<a class="reference" href="http://bugs.freestandards.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=16">http://bugs.freestandards.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=16</a>)</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="motivation">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id4" name="motivation">Motivation</a></h1>
<p>Gentoo currently does not provide sufficiently flexible support for
sites which wish to consolidate the data for their service-orientated
software under one simple, easy to administer, location.</p>
<p>Adding optional support for the /srv directory structure will give
sites increased flexibility on how to layout their machines.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="specification">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id5" name="specification">Specification</a></h1>
<p>A new global USE flag - srvdir - will be added to Portage.</p>
<p>Ebuilds that choose to support the srvdir USE flag will configure the
package to install and use their data under the /srv directory.</p>
<p>Ebuilds that choose to support the srvdir USE flag - and which install
packages that need write access to the same directories that the
software is installed into - will configure the package to install
the software under the /srv directory.</p>
<p>All packages configured to support the srvdir USE flag will support
this breakdown of /srv:</p>
<blockquote>
/srv/&lt;fqdn&gt;/&lt;service&gt;/&lt;service-specific tree&gt;</blockquote>
<dl>
<dt>where</dt>
<dd>&lt;fqdn&gt; is the fully-qualified domain name
&lt;service&gt; is the name of the service
&lt;service-specific tree&gt; is unique to the package</dd>
</dl>
<p>Ebuilds that install anything into /srv will install into /srv/localhost. 
/srv/localhost - or any of the &lt;service&gt; directories underneath it - may be
symlinks created by the local administrator.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="examples">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id6" name="examples">Examples</a></h1>
<p>For example, backup packages which support the srvdir USE flag could
save backup data under the /srv/&lt;hostname&gt;/backups directory for each
host on the network that they perform backups for.</p>
<p>For example, web-based applications which support the srvdir USE flag
could install their software under the /srv/localhost/www/htdocs directory.
Ebuilds for web-based applications which also support the vhost USE flag
will allow the user to install software under other service domains
through the webapp-config package.  See GLEP #11 and the vhost-config tool for
more information on how this works.</p>
<p>There are many other packages that could support the srvdir USE flag -
including Portage itself.</p>
<p>For packages that do not support the srvdir USE flag, there is currently no
recommended default location to use - although /var/localhost may prove a
useful alternative.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="rationale">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id7" name="rationale">Rationale</a></h1>
<p>Introducing optional support for the /srv directory will benefit a number of
groups of Gentoo users.</p>
<ul>
<li><p class="first">Users who wish to have /usr mounted read-only</p>
<p>/srv provides an optional alternative for packages that install writable
files into /usr.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Users who wish to isoloate services from /home utilisation</p>
<p>Services stop working when real users fill /home.  As many packages cannot
detect or robustly cope with this situation, services that write files
to disk normally end up corrupting those files.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Users who do not wish to export /var or its sub-directories</p>
<p>Exporting /var - or its subdirectories - via NFS et al is something that
some system administrators simply do not wish to do.  Providing these users
with the choice of installing into /srv fits with the published Gentoo
philosophy of allowing users as much choice as possible.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Users who share resources via NFS, or who use Network-Attached Storage (NAS)</p>
<p>Allowing system administrators to choose to configure service-providing
software to use a single file hierarchy will greatly simply the management
and maintenance of NFS exports - and imports - in clustered environments.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Service providers, who host more than one customer's services on a machine</p>
<p>Grouping all the storage (web, ftp, databases, IMAP, etc etc) under one
location greatly simplifies managing disk quotas on that host.</p>
<p>It is common practice for shared hosted systems to place web sites,
ftp sites and so on under a user's actual home directory.  This practice
requires the user's home directory to be world-readable, which does not
promote strong security!</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Users who wish to store service-orientated files onto a single logical 
volume to support future growth</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>The Gentoo Philosophy clearly states that Gentoo Linux will be a
highly-configurable meta-distribution.  Adding optional support for /srv is
very much in keeping with our Philosophy.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="implementation">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id8" name="implementation">Implementation</a></h1>
<p>A new USE flag - srvdir - will be added to Portage.</p>
<p>Ebuilds and eclasses will choose to support the srvdir USE flag or not on
an individual basis.</p>
<p>(Author's note: If this GLEP is approved, all web-based applications will
support the srvdir USE flag through the work being carried out under GLEP #11)</p>
<p>There has been some debate about whether the /srv directory should be provided
by the basesystem package or not.  Because this support is optional, and
because different sites will have different storage requirements, we believe
that it should be left to the local Gentoo system administrator to manually 
create the /srv directory.</p>
<p>If baselayout feels that it must install a /srv, then we propose that
baselayout installs /srv as a symlink to /var/srv.  This approach will support
installations that mount the root filesystem read-only.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="backwards-compatibility">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id9" name="backwards-compatibility">Backwards Compatibility</a></h1>
<p>Users who choose not to use the new srvdir USE flag will see little to no
change.  It is likely that some ebuilds will change their non-srvdir directory
layout to reduce the amount of effort required to support both options.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="copyright">
<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id10" name="copyright">Copyright</a></h1>
<p>This document is licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution / Share
Alike license. (<a class="reference" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0</a>)</p>
</div>
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29			<col class="field-name" />
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31			<tbody valign="top">
32			<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">GLEP:</th><td class="field-body">20</td>
33			</tr>
34			<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Title:</th><td class="field-body">/srv - Services Home Directory Support</td>
35			</tr>
36			<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Version:</th><td class="field-body">1.1</td>
37			</tr>
38			<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Last-Modified:</th><td class="field-body"><a class="reference" href="http://www.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/xml/htdocs/proj/en/glep/glep-0020.txt?cvsroot=gentoo">2004/02/22 02:09:07</a></td>
39			</tr>
40			<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Author:</th><td class="field-body">Stuart Herbert <stuart at gentoo.org>, Rob Holland <tigger at gentoo.org></td>
41			</tr>
42			<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Status:</th><td class="field-body">Draft</td>
43			</tr>
44			<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Type:</th><td class="field-body">Standards Track</td>
45			</tr>
46			<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Content-Type:</th><td class="field-body"><a class="reference" href="glep-0002.html">text/x-rst</a></td>
47			</tr>
48			<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Created:</th><td class="field-body">09-Feb-2004</td>
49			</tr>
50			<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Post-History:</th><td class="field-body">21-Feb-2004</td>
51			</tr>
52			</tbody>
53			</table>
54			<hr />
55			<div class="contents topic" id="contents">
56			<p class="topic-title"><a name="contents">Contents</a></p>
57			<ul class="simple">
58			<li><a class="reference" href="#thanks-to" id="id2" name="id2">Thanks To</a></li>
59			<li><a class="reference" href="#abstract" id="id3" name="id3">Abstract</a></li>
60			<li><a class="reference" href="#motivation" id="id4" name="id4">Motivation</a></li>
61			<li><a class="reference" href="#specification" id="id5" name="id5">Specification</a></li>
62			<li><a class="reference" href="#examples" id="id6" name="id6">Examples</a></li>
63			<li><a class="reference" href="#rationale" id="id7" name="id7">Rationale</a></li>
64			<li><a class="reference" href="#implementation" id="id8" name="id8">Implementation</a></li>
65			<li><a class="reference" href="#backwards-compatibility" id="id9" name="id9">Backwards Compatibility</a></li>
66			<li><a class="reference" href="#copyright" id="id10" name="id10">Copyright</a></li>
67			</ul>
68			</div>
69			<div class="section" id="thanks-to">
70			<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id2" name="thanks-to">Thanks To</a></h1>
71			<p>Thanks to Robin H. Johnson (<a class="reference" href="mailto:robbat2@gentoo.org">robbat2@gentoo.org</a>) for his assistance in writing
72			this GLEP.</p>
73			</div>
74			<div class="section" id="abstract">
75			<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id3" name="abstract">Abstract</a></h1>
76			<p>This GLEP proposes a new root-level directory - /srv - as an optional home
77			for the data (and sometimes the software too) for software that provides
78			services.</p>
79			<p>/srv will be supported via a USE flag. This gives users the choice
80			of using a dedicated service home hierarchy or not.</p>
81			<p>/srv is defined in FHS 2.3, which is part of the upcoming LSB v2.0 release
82			(<a class="reference" href="http://bugs.freestandards.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=16">http://bugs.freestandards.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=16</a>)</p>
83			</div>
84			<div class="section" id="motivation">
85			<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id4" name="motivation">Motivation</a></h1>
86			<p>Gentoo currently does not provide sufficiently flexible support for
87			sites which wish to consolidate the data for their service-orientated
88			software under one simple, easy to administer, location.</p>
89			<p>Adding optional support for the /srv directory structure will give
90			sites increased flexibility on how to layout their machines.</p>
91			</div>
92			<div class="section" id="specification">
93			<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id5" name="specification">Specification</a></h1>
94			<p>A new global USE flag - srvdir - will be added to Portage.</p>
95			<p>Ebuilds that choose to support the srvdir USE flag will configure the
96			package to install and use their data under the /srv directory.</p>
97			<p>Ebuilds that choose to support the srvdir USE flag - and which install
98			packages that need write access to the same directories that the
99			software is installed into - will configure the package to install
100			the software under the /srv directory.</p>
101			<p>All packages configured to support the srvdir USE flag will support
102			this breakdown of /srv:</p>
103			<blockquote>
104			/srv/<fqdn>/<service>/<service-specific tree></blockquote>
105			<dl>
106			<dt>where</dt>
107			<dd><fqdn> is the fully-qualified domain name
108			<service> is the name of the service
109			<service-specific tree> is unique to the package</dd>
110			</dl>
111			<p>Ebuilds that install anything into /srv will install into /srv/localhost.
112			/srv/localhost - or any of the <service> directories underneath it - may be
113			symlinks created by the local administrator.</p>
114			</div>
115			<div class="section" id="examples">
116			<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id6" name="examples">Examples</a></h1>
117			<p>For example, backup packages which support the srvdir USE flag could
118			save backup data under the /srv/<hostname>/backups directory for each
119			host on the network that they perform backups for.</p>
120			<p>For example, web-based applications which support the srvdir USE flag
121			could install their software under the /srv/localhost/www/htdocs directory.
122			Ebuilds for web-based applications which also support the vhost USE flag
123			will allow the user to install software under other service domains
124			through the webapp-config package. See GLEP #11 and the vhost-config tool for
125			more information on how this works.</p>
126			<p>There are many other packages that could support the srvdir USE flag -
127			including Portage itself.</p>
128			<p>For packages that do not support the srvdir USE flag, there is currently no
129			recommended default location to use - although /var/localhost may prove a
130			useful alternative.</p>
131			</div>
132			<div class="section" id="rationale">
133			<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id7" name="rationale">Rationale</a></h1>
134			<p>Introducing optional support for the /srv directory will benefit a number of
135			groups of Gentoo users.</p>
136			<ul>
137			<li><p class="first">Users who wish to have /usr mounted read-only</p>
138			<p>/srv provides an optional alternative for packages that install writable
139			files into /usr.</p>
140			</li>
141			<li><p class="first">Users who wish to isoloate services from /home utilisation</p>
142			<p>Services stop working when real users fill /home. As many packages cannot
143			detect or robustly cope with this situation, services that write files
144			to disk normally end up corrupting those files.</p>
145			</li>
146			<li><p class="first">Users who do not wish to export /var or its sub-directories</p>
147			<p>Exporting /var - or its subdirectories - via NFS et al is something that
148			some system administrators simply do not wish to do. Providing these users
149			with the choice of installing into /srv fits with the published Gentoo
150			philosophy of allowing users as much choice as possible.</p>
151			</li>
152			<li><p class="first">Users who share resources via NFS, or who use Network-Attached Storage (NAS)</p>
153			<p>Allowing system administrators to choose to configure service-providing
154			software to use a single file hierarchy will greatly simply the management
155			and maintenance of NFS exports - and imports - in clustered environments.</p>
156			</li>
157			<li><p class="first">Service providers, who host more than one customer's services on a machine</p>
158			<p>Grouping all the storage (web, ftp, databases, IMAP, etc etc) under one
159			location greatly simplifies managing disk quotas on that host.</p>
160			<p>It is common practice for shared hosted systems to place web sites,
161			ftp sites and so on under a user's actual home directory. This practice
162			requires the user's home directory to be world-readable, which does not
163			promote strong security!</p>
164			</li>
165			<li><p class="first">Users who wish to store service-orientated files onto a single logical
166			volume to support future growth</p>
167			</li>
168			</ul>
169			<p>The Gentoo Philosophy clearly states that Gentoo Linux will be a
170			highly-configurable meta-distribution. Adding optional support for /srv is
171			very much in keeping with our Philosophy.</p>
172			</div>
173			<div class="section" id="implementation">
174			<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id8" name="implementation">Implementation</a></h1>
175			<p>A new USE flag - srvdir - will be added to Portage.</p>
176			<p>Ebuilds and eclasses will choose to support the srvdir USE flag or not on
177			an individual basis.</p>
178			<p>(Author's note: If this GLEP is approved, all web-based applications will
179			support the srvdir USE flag through the work being carried out under GLEP #11)</p>
180			<p>There has been some debate about whether the /srv directory should be provided
181			by the basesystem package or not. Because this support is optional, and
182			because different sites will have different storage requirements, we believe
183			that it should be left to the local Gentoo system administrator to manually
184			create the /srv directory.</p>
185			<p>If baselayout feels that it must install a /srv, then we propose that
186			baselayout installs /srv as a symlink to /var/srv. This approach will support
187			installations that mount the root filesystem read-only.</p>
188			</div>
189			<div class="section" id="backwards-compatibility">
190			<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id9" name="backwards-compatibility">Backwards Compatibility</a></h1>
191			<p>Users who choose not to use the new srvdir USE flag will see little to no
192			change. It is likely that some ebuilds will change their non-srvdir directory
193			layout to reduce the amount of effort required to support both options.</p>
194			</div>
195			<div class="section" id="copyright">
196			<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id10" name="copyright">Copyright</a></h1>
197			<p>This document is licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution / Share
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