What is the /opt directory?
What is the /opt directory?
I've seen a lot of self-hosted software wanting to store their data in /opt, is there any reason why?
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46 comments
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Add-on application software packages
How are applications that go into /opt different than any other packages? Even after reading that spec, it seems arbitrary.
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Yes, it's arbitrary.
Packages that bundle a bunch of stuff, or otherwise make a mess, should go into /opt. Well-behaved packages that integrate with the system should be fine to install to /usr.
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Who gets the final call on that, the developer or the maintainer? I've noticed that Landscape goes into /opt, and Canonical is both developer and maintainer there.
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The developer could do one thing, but whoever builds the package could change it, so the packager.
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The system admin.
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Especially when some dumbass app starts writing log files to /opt.
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Sure, but in the case of dpkg?
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The packager.
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It is very arbitrary. Some/most non-free applications usually drop stuff into /opt, so it does not spread all over the filesystem. It makes sense if the application was not developed with Linux in mind, like Discord, Teamviewer etc.
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I think it refers to applications that do not respect the standard directories like
/usr/bin,/usr/share/man,/etc -
On all the work servers I maintain we pretty much install anything that's not in the base repo to /opt/
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If you didn't get it through your distro's package manager, it probably should go into
/opt.
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That seems to sum up my question. Thank you!
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46 comments