Arch Linux

pretzel

Member

Registered: 2005-12-24

Posts: 11

Why are KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice and QT installed to /opt ?

I just installed them with pacman -Sy kde, pacman -Sy openoffice-base etc. and they were all installed to /opt, instead of /usr. Firefox was installed to /opt too. (all of the other packages are installed to /usr.)
What do I need to do so that they will all be installed to /usr ?

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 13,252

Re: Why are KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice and QT installed to /opt ?

Placing those programs in /opt is intentional and part of the way *Nix works.

Check Linux Forum: opt - Linux File System for background info.

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postlogic

Member

Registered: 2005-02-24

Posts: 410

Website

Re: Why are KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice and QT installed to /opt ?

It's also described in the Arch Linux install documentation included on the CD, which even is available during install. It's used for bigger packages and groups, to keep it all in one place. Makes it a LOT easier to find what you're looking for.

You want them to be installed to /usr because of the PATH-variable? If so, just edit /etc/profile and then source /etc/profile to update it, and all binaries will be accessible.

pretzel

Member

Registered: 2005-12-24

Posts: 11

Re: Why are KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice and QT installed to /opt ?

Matter of fact I want them in /usr because I made a partition just for /usr, so that all the packages will be installed to one partition.
When I was using Debian (and other distros also...), it installed everything to /usr, so I assumed it will be the same in Arch. As it is now, it fills up my / partition, which isn't really big.
Although this is quite a good (and sensible..) idea, I can't let it fill my / partition. Is there a way to assign both /usr and /opt to one partition ?

Komodo

Member

From: Oxford, UK

Registered: 2005-11-03

Posts: 674

Re: Why are KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice and QT installed to /opt ?

You can do

     pacman -r [alternative root directory]

but that's not advised (I'm not sure why tbh).

Personally I'd symlink a folder in /usr to /opt:

     mkdir /usr/myopt
     ln -s /opt /usr/myopt

In case you haven't used a soft link like this before, it's basically like a shortcut in Windows - if you put something into /opt now, it will actually be put into /usr/myopt .

Komodo

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.oO Komodo Dave Oo.

pretzel

Member

Registered: 2005-12-24

Posts: 11

Re: Why are KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice and QT installed to /opt ?

Isn't it supposed to be
ln -s /usr/myopt /opt ?

because I tried to do, for a test,
ln -s /opt.test /usr/myopt
and then
touch /opt.test/foo
and it created foo on /usr/myopt.

I confuse alot with the target and destination in 'ln -s', but maybe this time I'm not wrong?

xaos5

Member

Registered: 2005-12-30

Posts: 75

Re: Why are KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice and QT installed to /opt ?

no that seems right, target comes first.

Komodo

Member

From: Oxford, UK

Registered: 2005-11-03

Posts: 674

Re: Why are KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice and QT installed to /opt ?

Isn't it supposed to be
ln -s /usr/myopt /opt ?

Always an easy way to find out, ask the manual page!

[dave@kaminoitte ~]$ man ln

NAME   
       ln - make links between files

SYNOPSIS
       ln [OPTION]... TARGET [LINK_NAME]
       ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY
       ln [OPTION]... --target-directory=DIRECTORY TARGET...

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.oO Komodo Dave Oo.