[csw-users] Why is CSW writing to /usr?

[Gary Algier]

Laurent Blume wrote:
> Alessio a écrit :
>> not all, there are packages that write outside /opt/csw.
>> the above error seems caused by the fc-cache process (maybe from 
>> CSWfconfig?) and should be harmless
> 
> To be more precise: the fc-cache process writes an index of fonts in 
> each directory where fonts reside. It's not placing any package file 
> there, and uses very little space. The CSW version uses a different name 
> for the cache than Sun's to avoid conflicts (fonts.cache-csw, something 
> like that).
> 
> However, I disagree that it's harmless. Not having up to date 
> fonts.cache can lead to very serious performance degradation if there 
> are many fonts, as each process using fontconfig scans all directories 
> to list fonts, every time. It's best to let the fc-cache process write 
> its files (they don't need to be writable afterwards since fonts aren't 
> going to change much).
> 
> Laurent

In this case, since this will be a subversion server I doubt there will
much font activity.  However, in general this is a problem on a Solaris
zone.  One of the advantages of the sparse root zones is that /usr is
shared so it need not be replicated.  This saves a lot of space.  Since
the CSW packages seem to all go in /opt, one would think this is safe.

Perhaps a different way to cache fonts could be developed that does
not write to the font directories.  The current method would also be
a problem in other shared-/usr environments such as diskless clients
(does anyone use those anymore?).  Perhaps the cache should go in
/var?


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Gary Algier, WB2FWZ          gaa at ulticom.com         +1 856 787 2758
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