Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: use of the /run directory

[Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbheek@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Ciaran McCreesh
<ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 17 May 2011 19:12:38 -0500
> William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 11:50:32PM +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
>> > I would be interested to hear how you plan to do the migration,
>> > given that everyone else has managed to screw it up...
>>
>> I'm not sure what you mean here. Openrc git will mount a tmpfs on /run
>> if it exists and create a lock directory inside the tmpfs.
>>
>> To make it work, I just need a new release of baselayout to make the
>> /run directory. Then, I also need to figure out where in the boot
>> process to make the symbolic links from /var/lock to /run/lock and
>> from /var/run to /run.
>> what else am I missing?
>
> The problem is that packages that have things installed to the old
> directories are going to get confused when upgraded if things have been
> moved around behind their backs.
>
> You may be better having both directories present, and not attempting
> to rename or move things at all. Then start fixing packages that install
> to the old directories.
>

As I understand it, that's precisely what William's plan is.

$ ls -ld /var/{lock/run}
/var/lock -> /run/lock
/var/run -> /run/

This should work transparently for all existing applications.

The only way this would fail is if they do an incorrect stat() on
/var/run and error out if it's a symbolic link. OTOH, it's precisely
to iron out such kinks that we have ~arch.

The other problem of daemons needing pre-existing directories is being
handled in https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=332633

Cheers,

-- 
~Nirbheek Chauhan

Gentoo GNOME+Mozilla Team