Bug 136013

Summary: [FHS] [read-only /usr] update-mime-database creates files not tracked by RPM in /usr/share/mime
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Daniel Reed <djr>
Component: shared-mime-infoAssignee: Bastien Nocera <bnocera>
Status: CLOSED UPSTREAM QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
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Hardware: i686   
OS: Linux   
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Last Closed: 2007-04-17 09:25:46 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Bug Blocks: 124120    
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Description Flags
list of all files in /usr/share/mime/ that are in neither rpmdb nor rpmdb-fedora none

Description Daniel Reed 2004-10-16 19:53:27 UTC 
User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: 

After an installation of Fedora Core rawhide, a process ``update-mime-database''
modifies files in the path ``/usr/share/mime''.

``/usr/share/mime'' is owned by the package ``shared-mime-info''.
``update-mime-database'' is also owned by the package ``shared-mime-info''.


http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#THEUSRHIERARCHY

``/usr is the second major section of the filesystem. /usr is shareable,
read-only data. That means that /usr should be shareable between various
FHS-compliant hosts and must not be written to. Any information that is
host-specific or varies with time is stored elsewhere.''

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#USRSHAREARCHITECTUREINDEPENDENTDATA

``The /usr/share hierarchy is for all read-only architecture independent data
files.''

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#THEVARHIERARCHY

``/var is specified here in order to make it possible to mount /usr read-only.
Everything that once went into /usr that is written to during system operation
(as opposed to installation and software maintenance) must be in /var.''

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#VARCACHEAPPLICATIONCACHEDATA

``/var/cache is intended for cached data from applications. Such data is locally
generated as a result of time-consuming I/O or calculation. The application must
be able to regenerate or restore the data. Unlike /var/spool, the cached files
can be deleted without data loss. The data must remain valid between invocations
of the application and rebooting the system.''

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
Comment 1 Daniel Reed 2004-10-16 21:24:00 UTC 
Created attachment 105330 [details]
list of all files in /usr/share/mime/ that are in neither rpmdb nor rpmdb-fedora
Comment 2 Matthias Clasen 2006-11-26 17:20:38 UTC 
This is still the case. But I don't think the "readonly /usr" argument holds
much water, since you have to write to /usr at package installation time anyway,
so it does not seem unreasonable to update mime information at the same time.

I recommend moving this to upstream, and see if anybody cares enough about this
to do something about it.
Comment 3 Bastien Nocera 2007-02-01 16:22:06 UTC 
*** Bug 132847 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 4 Bastien Nocera 2007-04-17 09:25:46 UTC 
The upstream being at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/index.cgi