Questions tagged [standard]
The standard tag has no summary.
106 questions
2
votes
1
answer
224
views
Is there a default or recommended directory to store source files ('configure', 'Makefile', etc) of *user* installs?
Suppose I have downloaded the source of some software I want to install just for myself, not system-wide; say Emacs or whatever. Typically the source is downloaded zipped, then it's unzipped in some ...
- 162
2
votes
1
answer
122
views
How to determine a certain linux distribution release is RVA20/RVA23 compatible?
For example, Ubuntu 25.10 plan to raise the required RISC-V ISA profile family to RVA23. How can I verify if this release is RVA23 compatible? Is there any efficient test tools I can use?
I know that ...
- 21
8
votes
2
answers
945
views
Does any organisation standardise system management fundamentals?
Context
Through a bug report and discussion about KDE Plasma's user management KConfig Module silently failing to support commas inside the full name field, I recently came to realise that parsing ...
13
votes
1
answer
948
views
How are specification issues / defects of POSIX collected and how can I participate?
While pondering whether IEEE 1003.1-2017 forbids race-condition safe ln -f, it occurred to me:
Even if this is really an unfortunate definition (which GNU coreutils' ln thankfully ignores), I would ...
- 52.9k
1
vote
0
answers
139
views
POSIX wording regarding Shell grammar
This page describing the Shell grammar has the following paragraph in the "Shell Grammar Rules" section:
[Command Name]
When the TOKEN is exactly a reserved word, the token identifier for ...
- 111
1
vote
1
answer
688
views
LC_TIME portability (and other locale settings)
It seems that Linux and FreeBSD (at least) have different notions of how presentation of time is implemented in different locales (LC_TIME), notably but not entirely in how the hour of day is ...
- 934
0
votes
1
answer
181
views
Why did Red Hat relocate Apache to /usr/sbin
I run Apache http servers on Red Hat and Oracle Linux machines. The account requires that only packages from the Red Hat or Oracle repositories be used. That’s fine , they work and are reasonably ...
- 11
-1
votes
1
answer
126
views
Are any modifications to the FHS being worked on (by the Linux Foundation)?
https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/227625/386242 explains the myriad benefits of a simpler and more consistent filesystem hierarchy, but also that without any cross-OS standardization, such efforts are ...
0
votes
1
answer
105
views
What does "site-wide" mean?
I'm reading man hier, which says:
/etc
Contains configuration files which are local to the machine. Some larger software packages, like X11, can have their own subdirectories below /etc. Site-...
- 388
7
votes
1
answer
2k
views
How should I interpret the fact that a Unicode code point is shown in two completely different ways in two different terminal emulators?
This is kind of a spin off from an older question I asked.
Here's the screenshot from that question:
In the bottom left is URxvt, and you can see a lighting bolt-like icon at the beginning of the ...
- 2,362
0
votes
1
answer
87
views
What is the standard for "traditional Unix file system permissions"?
I am writing about Unix file permissions - i.e. user/group/world, read(4)/write(2)/execute(1), chmod(), etc. I would like to point the reader to a standard (e.g. Markdown have the CommonMark standard, ...
- 185
8
votes
2
answers
290
views
Is /root a hard requirement for a modern Linux system? What about POSIX? UNIX?
I moved /root to /home/root and changed the appropriate entry in /etc/passwd in my Linux system quite some time ago and everything's worked until recently when I discovered that at least the firejail ...
0
votes
1
answer
95
views
How to interpret "functions ... may also be defined as macros"?
For the sake of public record, I'm asking here at SE rather than on the standardization mailing list, so that it'd be more accessible to people.
With practically every headers that specify functions (...
- 722
0
votes
1
answer
134
views
How to use one table (ods) file as a base for another table file?
I have an accounting ledger table (.ods) file which should be the base for other table files.
This table file should be the base for other table files such as:
2023.ods
2024.ods
2025.ods
These are ...
- 11
3
votes
0
answers
7k
views
When to clean up /var/tmp?
/var/tmp is not defined in POSIX, but is defined in FHS:
5.15. /var/tmp : Temporary files preserved between system reboots
5.15.1. Purpose
The /var/tmp directory is made available for programs that
...
- 4,338