4 ms·

Ahh Redhat, the distro which chose to symlink a bunch of binary lib files from Apache into the etc directory. "Why is grepping /etc taking so long? Binary fil

Ahh Redhat, the distro which chose to symlink a bunch of binary lib files from Apache into the etc directory. "Why is grepping /etc taking so long? Binary files in /etc?!? WTF?!?" Coming from Debian, Redhat seems to make a lot of irk-worthy choices.

Padding 12y ago
Is there an aricle with specifics on this and why it was done?
- teddyh 12y ago
  I have no direct information about this specific case, but in ye olden Unix™ days, there was no /sbin, so all those binaries instead lived in /etc. The Red Hat symlinks could be a backwards-compatibility thing.
  - SSLy 12y ago
    You mean bug-compability?
    - teddyh 12y ago
      No, I would not mean that, since the previous behavior was not a bug.
Erwin 12y ago
I find the /etc/httpd/logs symlink more annoying. If you want to grep through your Apache configuration you have to explicitly grep through conf and conf.d otherwise just going to /etc/httpd and doing a grep -r you're searching through gigs of Apache logs.
- Tiksi 12y ago
  grep -r shouldn't follow symlinks, -R does however: -d, --directories=ACTION how to handle directories; ACTION is 'read', 'recurse', or 'skip' -D, --devices=ACTION how to handle devices, FIFOs and sockets; ACTION is 'read' or 'skip' -r, --recursive like --directories=recurse -R, --dereference-recursive likewise, but follow all symlinks
  - feld 12y ago
    requires someone to know there will be symlinks they don't want to follow, though :-)
lmm 12y ago
As opposed to Debian, the distro which chooses to break tomcat (a program which unzips into a single folder and is thereby completely self-contained) up into a million different pieces and scatter them randomly all over your hard drive?
- ownagefool 12y ago
  To be fair to Debian, that's how it's supposed to work. You untar into /opt, self contained, while your apt install puts things in the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, which means config goes into /etc. You'll find most distros follow some FHS standard, although there's some differences in interpretation.
- marcosdumay 12y ago
  Yes, it's a distro where you can find EVERY setting on /etc, even if the software creator decided you should know to look somewhere else. (That said, making the package self contained is the most sensible way for the developer to release it. It's just not a good option for a distro package.)
deleted 12y ago
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Padding 12y ago

Is there an aricle with specifics on this and why it was done?

teddyh 12y ago
I have no direct information about this specific case, but in ye olden Unix™ days, there was no /sbin, so all those binaries instead lived in /etc. The Red Hat symlinks could be a backwards-compatibility thing.
- SSLy 12y ago
  You mean bug-compability?
  - teddyh 12y ago
    No, I would not mean that, since the previous behavior was not a bug.

Erwin 12y ago

I find the /etc/httpd/logs symlink more annoying. If you want to grep through your Apache configuration you have to explicitly grep through conf and conf.d otherwise just going to /etc/httpd and doing a grep -r you're searching through gigs of Apache logs.

Tiksi 12y ago
grep -r shouldn't follow symlinks, -R does however: -d, --directories=ACTION how to handle directories; ACTION is 'read', 'recurse', or 'skip' -D, --devices=ACTION how to handle devices, FIFOs and sockets; ACTION is 'read' or 'skip' -r, --recursive like --directories=recurse -R, --dereference-recursive likewise, but follow all symlinks
- feld 12y ago
  requires someone to know there will be symlinks they don't want to follow, though :-)

lmm 12y ago

As opposed to Debian, the distro which chooses to break tomcat (a program which unzips into a single folder and is thereby completely self-contained) up into a million different pieces and scatter them randomly all over your hard drive?

ownagefool 12y ago
To be fair to Debian, that's how it's supposed to work. You untar into /opt, self contained, while your apt install puts things in the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, which means config goes into /etc. You'll find most distros follow some FHS standard, although there's some differences in interpretation.
marcosdumay 12y ago
Yes, it's a distro where you can find EVERY setting on /etc, even if the software creator decided you should know to look somewhere else. (That said, making the package self contained is the most sensible way for the developer to release it. It's just not a good option for a distro package.)

deleted 12y ago

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