Chapter 10. Files

81

is a sub directory of the root directory

/

.)

In addition, symbolic links should be specified as short as possible, i.e., link targets like

foo

/.. /bar

are deprecated.

Note that when creating a relative link using

ln

it is not necessary for the target of the link to

exist relative to the working directory you're running

ln

from, nor is it necessary to change

directory to the directory where the link is to be made. Simply include the string that should

appear as the target of the link (this will be a pathname relative to the directory in which the

link resides) as the first argument to

ln

.

For example, in your

Makefile

or

debian/rules

, you can do things like:

ln  fs gcc $(prefix)/bin/cc

ln  fs gcc debian/tmp/usr/bin/cc

ln  fs ../sbin/sendmail $(prefix)/bin/runq

ln  fs ../sbin/sendmail debian/tmp/usr/bin/runq

A symbolic link pointing to a compressed file should always have the same file extension as

the referenced file. (For example, if a file

foo.gz

is referenced by a symbolic link, the filename

of the link has to end with  

.gz

  too, as in

bar.gz

.)

10.6 Device files

Packages must not include device files in the package file tree.

If a package needs any special device files that are not included in the base system, it must call

MAKEDEV

in the

postinst

script, after notifying the user

5

.

Packages must not remove any device files in the

postrm

or any other script. This is left to the

system administrator.

Debian uses the serial devices

/dev/ttyS*

. Programs using the old

/dev/cu*

devices

should be changed to use

/dev/ttyS*

.

10.7 Configuration files

10.7.1 Definitions

configuration file A file that affects the operation of a program, or provides site  or host 

specific information, or otherwise customizes the behavior of a program. Typically, con 

figuration files are intended to be modified by the system administrator (if needed or

desired) to conform to local policy or to provide more useful site specific behavior.

conffile

A file listed in a package's

conffiles

file, and is treated specially by

dpkg

(see

`Details of configuration' on page

44

).

5

This notification could be done via a (low priority) debconf message, or an echo (printf) statement.