Currently some databases store their data in /var/db while others store it in /var/lib.
So for consistency reason I propose to move all databases to /var/lib. One reason for this is that this is the default on most Linux distros, and tools work out of the box. For example the MySQL tools expect the database to be in /var/lib/mysql if the path is not explicitly given.
As there are already breaking changes (https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/25931 and https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/25753) in the database area for state version 17.09 I think it might be a good occasion to clean this up.
What do the maintainers think about this?
Databases using /var/db:
Other tools in /var/db:
Databases already in /var/lib:
This sounds like a "much pain, little gain" change. It will require a lot of ad hoc, risky scripts to move data directories, and will make rollbacks impossible.
@edolstra I would not do automatic data migration. Just change the default if the state version is set to 17.09. This is how it is currently done for MySQL and PostgreSQL. See: #25931 and #25753
How about we create a compatibility symlink /var/lib/mysql -> /var/db/mysql?
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