Re: [hylafax-users] No /etc/hylafax after install

[A J Stiles <hylafax_resp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 06 February 2007 19:53, Graham Chiu wrote:
> What's the difference between /etc/hylafax and /var/spool/hylafax/etc ?
>
> Should one put one's own scripts in the former or latter?

Unix doesn't generally care where files are.  If you wanted, you could have 
everything in one directory.  But this would be a mess, so we have developed 
certain conventions; bin for binaries, lib for library files, etc for 
configuration files, src for source and so forth.

Different suppliers of Unix-like systems have disagreed over the fine details, 
but it doesn't really matter because, unlike Windows, in Unix everything is 
usually compiled on the same machine where it is going to be run.  When you 
compile an application, you have to tell it where the various files it needs 
to access will be located, and the paths get written into the program.  All 
of this is usually taken care of by the configure script, which generates a 
Makefile to control the compilation.  

GNU/Linux expects all configuration files to be found somewhere under /etc/  
(in a directory of their own if one application requires many configuration 
files, but a simple file in /etc/ is also permissible if that is all that is 
required).  Other Unix-like systems manage configuration files differently; 
for instance having their own directory under /usr/local/ where *everything* 
is stored, and symlinking the main binary at /usr/local/foo/bin/foo 
to /usr/bin/foo.  

Most GNU/Linux distributors provide pre-compiled binary packages  (RPM or DEB)  
for convenience's sake -- in the days of dial-up modems, slow processors and 
small HDDs, not having to compile everything from source was seen as a 
welcome bonus.  These packages are basically archives containing the files 
that were generated in the course of compilation  (by the "configure" 
and "make" steps)  along with instructions for where they should be placed 
and what permissions they should have -- installing an RPM or DEB package 
does pretty much the same thing that "make install" does when you compile a 
package the "old-fashioned" way.  The distributors usually alter packages to 
match their own conventions.  This is easily  (for a hacker!)  done; either 
by passing parameters to "configure" or by editing the Makefile.  

The upshot of all of which is:

If you compiled your Hylafax from source, and accepted all the defaults, it 
will put its configuration files in /var/spool/hylafax/etc/.  If you 
installed a Hylafax RPM or DEB package from your distributor, then it most 
probably will put its configuration files in somewhere like /etc/hylafax/.  

Hope that helps.

--
AJS

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