Should I install Linux applications in /var or /opt?

The standard for these issues is the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. It’s a rather big document. Basically (and very roughly), the standard paths on Linux are:

  • /bin & /sbin are for vital programs for the OS, sbin being for administrators only ;
  • /usr/bin & /usr/sbin are for not vital programs, sbin being for administrators only ;
  • /var is for living data for programs. It can be cache data, spool data, temporary data (unless it’s in /tmp, which is wiped at every reboot), etc. ;
  • /usr/local is for locally installed programs. Typically, it hosts programs that follow the standards but were not packaged for the OS, but rather installed manually by the administrator (using for example ./configure && make && make install) as well as administrator scripts ;
  • /opt is for programs that are not packaged and don’t follow the standards. You’d just put all the libraries there together with the program. It’s often a quick & dirty solution, but it can also be used for programs that are made by yourself and for which you wish to have a specific path. You can make your own path (e.g. /opt/yourcompany) within it, and in this case you are encouraged to register it as part of the standard paths ;
  • /etc should not contain programs, but rather configurations.

If your programs are specific to the services provided by the service, /srv can also be a good location for them. For example, I prefer to use /srv/www for websites rather than /var/www to make sure the directory will only contain data I added myself, and nothing that comes from software packages.

There are some differences between distributions. For example, RedHat systems use libexec directories when Debian/Ubuntu systems don’t.

The FHS is mostly used by Linux distributions (I actually don’t know any other OS that really complies to it). Other Unix systems don’t follow it. For example, BSD systems tend to use /usr/local for packaged programs, which is not the case for Linux. Solaris has very different standard paths.

I strongly encourage you to read the FHS document I linked above if you wish to know more about this.

Related Posts:

  1. Install tkinter for Python
  2. Yum fails with – There are no enabled repos.
  3. How to make rpm auto install dependencies
  4. How to install Android SDK on Ubuntu?
  5. python-dev installation error: ImportError: No module named apt_pkg
  6. How do I deal with a filename that starts with the hyphen (-) character?
  7. Bash: No such file or directory?
  8. What’s a .sh file?
  9. How can I symlink a file in Linux? [closed]
  10. Kill detached screen session [closed]
  11. How to get the url of the current svn repo?
  12. How to unmount a busy device
  13. How to unmount a busy device
  14. performing HTTP requests with cURL (using PROXY)
  15. No space left on device
  16. How to perform grep operation on all files in a directory?
  17. Amazon Linux: apt-get: command not found
  18. Pass a password to ssh in pure bash
  19. How can I exclude directories from grep -R?
  20. gcc: error: unrecognized command line option
  21. How to change permissions for a folder and its subfolders/files in one step
  22. Docker can’t connect to docker daemon
  23. Need a good hex editor for Linux
  24. Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal
  25. Directory Inode vs Regular File Inode
  26. How to cat <> a file containing code?
  27. Diff command along with Grep gives “Binary file (standard input) matches”
  28. can’t remove python pip
  29. How would I get a cron job to run every 30 minutes?
  30. How to automatically redirect HTTP to HTTPS on Apache servers?
  31. Trying to use bash on Windows and got no installed distributions message
  32. “Unable to find remote helper for ‘https'” during git clone
  33. What is the difference between “#!/usr/bin/env bash” and “#!/usr/bin/bash”?
  34. Is there a “goto” statement in bash?
  35. tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive
  36. How can I delete a user in linux when the system says its currently used in a process
  37. Command to change the default home directory of a user
  38. Post request with Wget?
  39. Read and write to binary files in C?
  40. Telnet [Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused]
  41. Terminal Multiplexer for Microsoft Windows – Installers for GNU Screen or tmux
  42. Can’t remove a directory in Unix
  43. Is there an alternative sleep function in C to milliseconds?
  44. How do I update a Python package?
  45. Gedit command not working in kali linux terminal
  46. Syntax error near unexpected token ‘then’
  47. Curl : connection refused
  48. C fopen vs open
  49. How can I use grep to show just filenames on Linux?
  50. Bash script prints “Command Not Found” on empty lines
  51. Why does “docker attach” hang?
  52. Bash export command
  53. How to edit gitignore file
  54. Retrieve last 100 lines logs
  55. What are various options / arguments for “./configure” in Linux
  56. Adding a new entry to the PATH variable in ZSH
  57. Downloading Java JDK on Linux via wget is shown license page instead
  58. Delete .DS_STORE files in current folder and all subfolders from command line on Mac
  59. How to configure WP filesystem access in Linux (Ubuntu Server)?
  60. Can’t upload media to my Raspberry Pi WordPress server
  61. What happen after new plugin get installed in term of permissions?
  62. Fastest way to install a multisite?
  63. My WordPress is giving me an 403 error when saving post/draft with specific words
  64. Anyone else experiencing high rates of Linux server crashes during a leap second day?
  65. Can I nohup/screen an already-started process?
  66. df in linux not showing correct free space after file removal
  67. In my /etc/hosts/ file on Linux/OSX, how do I do a wildcard subdomain?
  68. Setting the hostname: FQDN or short name?
  69. Shell command to monitor changes in a file
  70. When does /tmp get cleared?
  71. Difference in sites-available vs sites-enabled vs conf.d directories (Nginx)?
  72. How do I sleep for a millisecond in bash or ksh
  73. Disk full, du tells different. How to further investigate?
  74. What does ‘set -e’ do, and why might it be considered dangerous?
  75. Filename length limits on linux?
  76. What useful things can one add to one’s .bashrc? [closed]
  77. How to add a timestamp to bash script log?
  78. best way to clear all iptables rules
  79. How to remove empty/blank lines from a file in Unix (including spaces)?
  80. How can I kill all stopped jobs?
  81. How to copy file preserving directory path in Linux?
  82. Postfix – how to retry delivery of mail in queue?
  83. How can I rename a Unix user?
  84. How to re-order windows, change the scroll shortcut, and modify the status bar contents in GNU Screen?
  85. Is it possible to alias a hostname in Linux?
  86. How do I list loaded Linux module parameter values?
  87. Does getting disconnected from an SSH session kill your programs?
  88. Tips for Securing a LAMP Server
  89. What Linux distribution is the Amazon Linux AMI based on?
  90. How to prevent a user from login in, but allow “su – user” in Linux?
  91. What is this IP address: 169.254.169.254?
  92. I have a keypair. How do I determine the key length?
  93. How to do the port forwarding from one ip to another ip in same network?
  94. Why drop caches in Linux?
  95. Linux – Is there a way to prevent/protect a file from being deleted even by root?
  96. swap partition vs file for performance?
  97. Best way to disable swap in Linux
  98. How to remove invalid characters from filenames?
  99. How can I zip/compress a symlink?
  100. How to find the physical volume(s) that hold a logical volume in LVM

Leave a Comment