This hierarchy holds state information pertaining to an application or the system. State information is data that programs modify while they run, and that pertains to one specific host. Users must never need to modify files in /var/lib to configure a package's operation.
State information is generally used to preserve the condition of an application (or a group of inter-related applications) between invocations and between different instances of the same application. State information should generally remain valid after a reboot, should not be logging output, and should not be spooled data.
An application (or a group of inter-related applications) must use a subdirectory of /var/lib for its data.[footnote 33] There is one required subdirectory, /var/lib/misc, which is intended for state files that don't need a subdirectory; the other subdirectories should only be present if the application in question is included in the distribution.
/var/lib/<name> is the location that must be used for all distribution packaging support. Different distributions may use different names, of course.
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"/var/lib" misc |
"Variable state information" Miscellaneous state data |
Tree 5.8.2.1
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"/var/lib" <editor> <pkgtool> <package> hwclock xdm |
"Variable state information" Editor backup files and state (optional) Packaging support files (optional) State data for packages and subsystems (optional) State directory for hwclock (optional) X display manager variable data (optional) |
Tree 5.8.3.2
Other editors may not require a directory for crash-recovery files, but may require a well-defined place to store other information while the editor is running. This information should be stored in a subdirectory under /var/lib (for example, GNU Emacs would place lock files in /var/lib/emacs/lock).
Future editors may require additional state information beyond crash-recovery files and lock files -- this information should also be placed under /var/lib/<editor>.
Editor-specific lock files are usually quite different from the device
or resource lock files that are stored in /var/lock and, hence,
are stored under /var/lib.
[33] An important difference between this version of this standard and previous ones is that applications are now required to use a subdirectory of /var/lib.
[34] This hierarchy should contain files stored in /var/db in current BSD releases. These include locate.database and mountdtab, and the kernel symbol database(s).