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I have plenty of files in /var/lib/ that are not owned by any package, same in /var/log/ , /var/cache/ , /etc/sysconfig/ and other directories - their parent di

I have plenty of files in /var/lib/ that are not owned by any package, same in /var/log/ , /var/cache/ , /etc/sysconfig/ and other directories - their parent directory is owned by a different package than the ones creating these files. I'm not arguing that a decent package manager is a better than none - but they are solving all issues you claim they do. Pretty much all OSs, including windows, have ways to view which processes has a file open

laumars 8y ago
> I have plenty of files in /var/lib/ that are not owned by any package, same in /var/log/ , /var/cache/ , /etc/sysconfig/ and other directories - their parent directory is owned by a different package than the ones creating these files. Got any examples of that? You'd expect only docker to write to /var/lib/docker, mysql to write to /var/lib/mysql. etc. Not discounted that I've overlooked something but a quick look in my /var/lib and it's easy to see what is managed by what. So I'm curious what instances you have of a package manager creating a directory and then a completely unrelated daemon writing to that directory. > I'm not arguing that a decent package manager is a better than none - but they are solving all issues you claim they do. I'm not claiming they solve all the problems - in fact I literally identified a few problems they don't solve! Plus even those points I identified aside, there will always be edge cases for thing that package manager should have solved but failed to do so. Perhaps we should turn this discussion on it's head and discuss better ways to solve the problems people are describing? What would your solution be? Or are you ostensibly agreeing with my points but being contrary just for the sake of playing devils advocate? > Pretty much all OSs, including windows, have ways to view which processes has a file open Isn't that literally what I just said? (plus I gave a few examples too).
- plopz 8y ago
  > Got any examples of that? Not the person you were talking to, but looking at certbot, it puts files into /lib/systemd/system/ and /etc/cron.d/ with root:root.
  - laumars 8y ago
    Thank you. I've not used certbot so excuse the dumb question, but is certbot doing that during install (ie via the package manager) or during program execution (ie when the certbot ELF is launched)? I shouldn't expect too much in /lib/systemd/system is installed outside of package managers but I agree it does happen and at least they're generally quite easy to identify which service file does what. crontab is definitely one of those nasty things that can often get forgotten about though (and I speak from unfortunate experience there hah!) We're really drifting into the domain of Puppet and it's ilk now though.
    - plopz 8y ago
      I'm not sure when those files get created, I just knew about that example off the top of my head because I had to spend some time figuring out why our post-renew hook wasn't working. dpkg -L helps a lot when figuring out where all the files get spread.
      - laumars 8y ago
        > dpkg -L helps a lot when figuring out where all the files get spread. Well yeah, that was the central point of this conversation :)

laumars 8y ago

> I have plenty of files in /var/lib/ that are not owned by any package, same in /var/log/ , /var/cache/ , /etc/sysconfig/ and other directories - their parent directory is owned by a different package than the ones creating these files. Got any examples of that? You'd expect only docker to write to /var/lib/docker, mysql to write to /var/lib/mysql. etc. Not discounted that I've overlooked something but a quick look in my /var/lib and it's easy to see what is managed by what. So I'm curious what instances you have of a package manager creating a directory and then a completely unrelated daemon writing to that directory. > I'm not arguing that a decent package manager is a better than none - but they are solving all issues you claim they do. I'm not claiming they solve all the problems - in fact I literally identified a few problems they don't solve! Plus even those points I identified aside, there will always be edge cases for thing that package manager should have solved but failed to do so. Perhaps we should turn this discussion on it's head and discuss better ways to solve the problems people are describing? What would your solution be? Or are you ostensibly agreeing with my points but being contrary just for the sake of playing devils advocate? > Pretty much all OSs, including windows, have ways to view which processes has a file open Isn't that literally what I just said? (plus I gave a few examples too).

plopz 8y ago
> Got any examples of that? Not the person you were talking to, but looking at certbot, it puts files into /lib/systemd/system/ and /etc/cron.d/ with root:root.
- laumars 8y ago
  Thank you. I've not used certbot so excuse the dumb question, but is certbot doing that during install (ie via the package manager) or during program execution (ie when the certbot ELF is launched)? I shouldn't expect too much in /lib/systemd/system is installed outside of package managers but I agree it does happen and at least they're generally quite easy to identify which service file does what. crontab is definitely one of those nasty things that can often get forgotten about though (and I speak from unfortunate experience there hah!) We're really drifting into the domain of Puppet and it's ilk now though.
  - plopz 8y ago
    I'm not sure when those files get created, I just knew about that example off the top of my head because I had to spend some time figuring out why our post-renew hook wasn't working. dpkg -L helps a lot when figuring out where all the files get spread.
    - laumars 8y ago
      > dpkg -L helps a lot when figuring out where all the files get spread. Well yeah, that was the central point of this conversation :)