Please clarify location of /usr/share/magic (4.11.6)

[Jeff Johnson]

The specification of the /usr/share/magic file (FHS 2.3 beta 2, 4.11.6)
does not reflect real-world usage anymore. This has been brought up
in Debian Bug#215139 (http://bugs.debian.org).

A summary has been posted to the fhs-discuss list, archived at
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=3272624&forum_id=3128
I'm quoting from there:

* Joey Hess <joeyh@de...> [2003-10-10 13:04]:
 > With the new /usr/share/misc/file/ directory containing the magic files,
 > file violates the spirit or the letter of the FHS. I'm not sure which,
 > it depends on how you read it.
 > 4.7.3 /usr/share/misc : Miscellaneous architecture-independent data
 > This directory contains miscellaneous architecture-independent files
 > which don't require a separate subdirectory under /usr/share. It is a
 > required directory under /usr/share.
 > The following files, if present, should be located under
 > /usr/share/misc:
 > { ascii, magic, termcap, termcap.db }
 > So the FHS requires that /usr/share/magic exist, but it requires it based on
 > the now false assumption that file only needs one file in /usr/share.
 > It also seems to want groups of more than one file to go in their own
 > subdirectory (/usr/share/file), and indeed /usr/share/misc/file/ feels
 > strange to me.

 > I don't know what the best answer is but it seems to me we could do better
 > than the current situation.

 Since FHS 2.3 is currently beta, I hope that this can be clarified
 (yes, I know the quote above is not from 2.3). At the moment, most
 Linux vendors have solved this problem in a different way.

 Mandrake 9.1 has the folllwing files:

 /usr/share/misc/magic
 /usr/share/misc/magic.mgc
 /usr/share/misc/magic.mime
 /usr/share/misc/magic.mime.mgc

 SuSE 8.2 has:

 /usr/share/misc/magic
 /usr/share/misc/magic.mgc
 /usr/share/misc/magic.mime

 Red Hat Linux 9 has:

 /usr/share/magic
 /usr/share/magic.mgc
 /usr/share/magic.mime
 /usr/share/magic.mime.mgc
 /usr/share/misc/magic (this is a symlink to ../magic)

 Fedora Linux (severn), currently in beta, has:

 /usr/share/file/magic
 /usr/share/file/magic.mgc
 /usr/share/file/magic.mime
 /usr/share/file/magic.mime.mgc
 /usr/share/magic (a symlink to ../file/magic)
 /usr/share/magic.mime (a symlink to ../file/magic.mime)
 /usr/share/misc/magic (a symlink to ../magic)

 Debian GNU/Linux sarge, currently in development, has:

 /usr/share/misc/file
 /usr/share/misc/file/magic
 /usr/share/misc/file/magic.mime
 /usr/share/misc/file/magic.mgc
 /usr/share/misc/file/magic.mime.mgc
 (no /usr/share/misc/magic at all)

 Clearly just having a single file as /usr/share/misc/magic is not
 current practice anymore, so it would be good if FHS could be
 updated.
Comment 1