[GRASS5] grass database: where to put it

[Carl Worth]

Helena Mitasova writes:
 > >
 > 
 > We have had some discussion about this with Markus but I am curious to
 > hear from others:
 > 
 > Where do you put your GRASS database on your system (say you expect it
 > to have 10-20GB)

It would seem that according to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard,
(http://www.pathname.com/fhs/2.0/fhs-toc.html), that a GRASS database
belongs in /var. The /var directory is used for read-write "variable
data files". System administrators are likely already expecting the
/var directory to be large and potentially growing so it makes sense
for GRASS data files.

Current/Historical practice, (as measured by 28 packages on my Debian
system), would put this in:

	/var/lib/grass5

but the standard says that /var/lib is on its way out and that new
packages should use /var/state instead. So:

	/var/state/grass5

(My current Debian system has exactly one package using the
/var/state/<package_name> convention so far).

Note that I also changed from "grassdata" to "grass5" so that it
adheres precisely to the "/var/state/<package_name>" convention.

Some of the reasons some of the other proposed options might be "bad"
include the fact that directories such as /usr might be mounted
read-only. Directories such as /data, /usr2 are not standard and
therefore might be confusing. And the /opt directory is typically used
for installation of package binaries rather than data files.

Finally, /home/<user>/grassdata, might be a perfectly reasonable setup
for single-user as opposed to system data.

So, there you have my two bits.

-Carl