Problems creating a directory in /usr

[Jean-David Beyer]

On 02/08/2013 07:25 AM, Clive Hills wrote:
> Thanks both. The application is a RDBMS and it actually wants to store
> it's code in that dir and subdirectories thereof.
> I think the actual datavolumes/files can be elsewhere. I'm guessing this
> might have to be done in permissive mode.
> Actually getting their code to work has been a big enough headache in
> the past but for historical reasons I do like to
> maintain contact with their current stuff.
> 
This will not help you directly, but I think you should submit a bug
report to the distributers of that program because they should not put
it it that directory at all. Perhaps it should go in /usr/local/bin. I
do not actually know if SELinux would allow that*. I do not think stuff
for users has been in /usr since Dennis and Ken wrote the UNIX OS in six
assembler files in the very late 1960s and early 1970s. They may have
gone there as late as System 3 from Bell Labs, but I have never seen
user stuff anywhere but /home since I started running Linux.

I know when I was running postgreSQL (without SELinux), it was here:

postgres:x:26:26:PostgreSQL Server:/var/lib/pgsql:/bin/bash

And that is where it is now on my RHEL 6 system with SELinux running. I
have not used it though. When I ran it, I put all the data for the
program elsewhere, in /data1, /data2, /data3, ..., /data6. These were
each on a hard drive of its own, with nothing else on those drives, to
reduce seek contention and enable more parallel IO. (multiple SCSI
controllers on separate PCI busses). I have not tried this with SELinux
running because I do not really need a dbms anymore.

My guess is that if you blindly put that stuff in /var/lib it would not
work, though you might be lucky. I believe the  distributers of that
program should fix it, but if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

________
* I have installed the BOINC stuff on my machine with no trouble, and it
is in /usr/bin

[/usr/bin]$ ls -l boinc*
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root      12 Nov 30 17:42 boinc -> boinc_client
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  514392 Jul 22  2010 boinc_client
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root   51736 Jul 22  2010 boinccmd
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 3402264 Jul 22  2010 boinc_gui
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root     516 Jul 22  2010 boincmgr

I did not do anything special to get it there; that is just where the
rpm put it. I did have some trouble running it with SELinux. It ran OK,
but got lots of messages in /var/log or wherever they went.