Bug#462270: asterisk: agi-bin directory is intended for local scripts, and should be under /var

[Tim Retout]

On Thu, 2008-01-24 at 14:37 +0200, Faidon Liambotis wrote:
> > Requiring administrators to add their own host-specific scripts
> > under /usr also goes against the FHS (and therefore Debian Policy); the
> > intention of the /usr hierarchy is that it is "shareable, read-only
> > data" that is not host-specific - it could potentially be shared between
> > different machines:
> > http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#THEUSRHIERARCHY
> Well, I don't exactly agree to the "host-specific scripts".
> If we go down this road, then the whole /usr/local should go away
> (think of perl, python etc.)

There can be site-specific software that is not host-specific, so
third-party Perl modules would still belong in /usr/local.

> > I believe symlinks in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin can be considered state
> > information of the system (i.e. the set of currently available AGI
> > scripts on this host) and fits the FHS criteria:
> > http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#VARLIBVARIABLESTATEINFORMATION
> That is a stretch and totally incorrect, sorry.
> 
> > So, I hope this isn't just making things more complicated for nothing -
> > it could be interpreted as a violation of a "must" directive in Debian
> > Policy (section 9.1.1).
> That may be a legitimate bug but it's hardly a policy violation.
> I presume you agree, since you didn't file it as "serious", even though 
> you are aware of our procedures.

Well, I agree that it's not clear-cut, so I wanted to have a discussion
before landing an RC bug on you. ;) After all, the asterisk package
isn't installing anything in non-FHS directories itself.

But symlinks in /var/lib would not be unprecedented; I can think, for
example, of the typo3-dummy package (for configuring a web app), which
puts a whole hierarchy of files and symlinks in /var/lib/typo3-dummy.
There must be more.

I seem to recall the policy manual suggests asking the debian-devel
mailing list for advice on complicated FHS issues.

> All in all, I believe that we may have to support multiple directories 
> (i.e. also supporting /usr/local) and the only way I can see for doing 
> that is by modifying asterisk's source.
> 
> I'll have a look and try to produce a not very crude hack to do that.
> 
> I will also try to move this discussion with upstream -- may be we can 
> agree on a proper solution.

Yes, ideally we would add this support - but would it not involve
changing the format of the config file, and creating even more
incompatibilities with upstream?

At least until upstream change this themselves, I suspect it might be
nicer just to use some symlinks.

-- 
Tim Retout <tim at retout.co.uk>