[arch-general] let's discuss /srv again

[Phillip Smith]

(Sorry if this comes through twice, but I can't see any evidence that
it has already gone through since originally sending it yesterday.

According to the FHS, /srv is for "site-specific" data served by the host:
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#SRVDATAFORSERVICESPROVIDEDBYSYSTEM

IMHO, this means webapps. The FHS makes specific mention that a
distribution must take care not to touch user files in this directory,
which infers that it is acceptable (expected?) that distributions will
put files here.

I also strongly agree that user modifyable files (eg, configuration
files) must not be put anywhere in /usr and splitting the
configuration into /etc like non-webapps is just a security nightmare.
We also want to avoid untrusted processes like apache/lighttpd having
read/write access into /usr where ever possible. Referring to the FHS
again:

"/usr is shareable, read-only data. That means that /usr should be
shareable between various FHS-compliant hosts and must not be written
to. Any information that is host-specific or varies with time is
stored elsewhere."

Keywords: "read-only", "must not be written to" and "host-specific"