Re: Stateful system directories

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hello Efraim,

Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il> skribis:

> Ignoring the directories in users' home directories, /var/lib/gdm has
> been a source of pain on GNOME upgrades, and we still have some problems
> with /var/cache/fontconfig and I believe there is something else with
> permissions if you switch between ntp and openntpd. I actually have the
> following snippet in my OS-config:
>
> ;; This directory shouldn't exist
> (file-system
>   (device "none")
>   (mount-point "/var/cache/fontconfig")
>   (type "tmpfs")
>   (flags '(read-only))
>   (check? #f))

I think that would work, or we could even make it a writable tmpfs?

(Somehow, I do have /var/cache/fontconfig, but never hard any problems
with it.  It hasn’t been written to in months, and it’s only writable by
root anyway.  Does that mean that people run into problem when they run
GUIs as root?)

> While we work on fixing these does it make sense to modify some of these
> services to unconditionally recreate their home directories on
> boot/activation?

Like /var/lib/gdm?  Maybe.  Or maybe ‘gdm-service-type’ could extend
‘file-system-service-type’ with a tmpfs for /var/lib/gdm?

I suppose that might increase startup time a bit since it’d be
rebuilding its cache every time.  Perhaps we’d also lose bits of state,
no?

Thanks,
Ludo’.