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Sender: monnier@tequila.systemsz.cs.yale.edu
From: Stefan Monnier <monnier+/news/gnu/misc/discuss@tequila.cs.yale.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.x,alt.os.linux,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,gnu.misc.discuss,comp.unix.solaris
Subject: Re: unix acronyms -collecting a list?
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Date: 17 May 1997 17:01:37 -0400
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curt@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) writes:
> what /var was - it came many many years later. I've
> always thought it meant variable i.e. the stuff that would
> change from one system to the next on a network of
> systems with shared filesystems.
I believe the "veriable" means that it holds the part of the file-system that
has variable (in the sense of varying with time) data. /usr and /etc could be
(with some care) read-only and only /var really needs to be read-write. Of
course this is invalidated by /etc/utmp and /etc/mtab, but these should really
be /var/run/utmp and /var/run/mtab so it doesn't count.
Stefan