Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

Tree 5.5.1

This hierarchy holds state information pertaining to an application or the system. State information is data that programs modify while they run, and that pertains to one specific host. Users should never need to modify files in /var/lib to configure a package's operation.

State information is generally used to preserve the condition of an application (or a group of inter-related applications) between invocations and between different instances of the same application. State information should generally remain valid after a reboot, should not be logging output, and should not be spooled data.

An application (or a group of inter-related applications) should use a subdirectory of /var/lib for its data. There is one required subdirectory, /var/lib/misc, which is intended for state files that don't need a subdirectory; the other subdirectories should only be present if the application in question is included in the distribution.

/var/lib/<name> is the location that should be used for all distribution packaging support. Different distributions may use different names, of course.

An important difference between this version of this standard and previous ones is that applications are now required to use a subdirectory of /var/lib.