Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

5.2 /var/cache : Application cache data

"/var/cache"
fonts
man
www
<package>

"Cache directories"
Locally-generated fonts
Locally-formatted manual pages
WWW proxy or cache data
Package specific cache data

Tree 5.2.1

/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 should remain valid between invocations of the application and rebooting the system.

Files located under /var/cache may be expired in an application specific manner, by the system administrator, or both. The application should always be able to recover from manual deletion of these files (generally because of a disk space shortage). No other requirements are made on the data format of the cache directories.

START RATIONALE

The existence of a separate directory for cached data allows system administrators to set different disk and backup policies from other directories in /var.

END RATIONALE

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Translated by troff2html v1.4 on 13 January 2001 by Daniel Quinlan