[CentOS] java 1.6 and 1.7 on CentOS

[Les Mikesell]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 4:15 AM, Toralf Lund <toralf.lund at pgs.com> wrote:
>
>> What is formally correct  about putting executables in some obscure
>> place under /var?
> I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. For the alternatives setup I
> have links on /usr/bin or whatever pointing to other links on
> /etc/alternatives, which in turn point to the real files - where direct
> links from /usr/bin would of course be simpler. Perhaps you were talking
> about something else, or are the locations different on CentOS 7 (I'm
> using version 6.)

So what do you have to execute when you want to run a jvm that is not
the current system default in alternatives?   And why does anyone
think that is a formally correct place?

> What I was referring to is that I believe it's considered as incorrect
> to put "dynamic" data on /usr these days. I'm not sure there is a
> separate specification saying so, or if it's just taken to be implied by
> the FHS (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html).

Committee decisions are normally bad enough, but changing them all the
time makes them even worse - but I suppose they have to do something
to justify their existence.  /usr had a well defined role from the
beginning of unix - and that was to not hold anything needed for
booting.  /sbin and /usr/sbin are just weird, as though users don't
need to run common commands like ifconfig.   /var for the java
executables??   /opt might have made sense.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com