Bug#1039979: /var/run and /var/lock should not be absolute symlinks

On Fri, 20 Feb 2026 at 12:22:38 +0100, Santiago Vila wrote:
>While we are at it, I wonder if we could actually deprecate those
>locations for forky, and what would be the steps for doing so.

Which meaning of deprecated do you have in mind: the one where we 
discourage its use but it continues to work indefinitely, or the one 
where we plan to make it stop working? For /var/run, I think the first 
would be fine but the second would not.

/var/run is required by FHS 3.0, and paths below /var/run are part of 
interoperable cross-distro specifications from before /run was invented 
(at least D-Bus, and probably others) so it's something that should 
continue to exist essentially forever, similar to /bin -> usr/bin 
continuing to exist after merged /usr so that /bin/sh still works. We 
can discourage accessing it via that name and encourage accessing it via 
/run (for example systemd already logs warnings if a systemd unit refers 
to /var/run) but fully removing it would be an interoperability break, 
not just between old Debian and new Debian but also between non-Debian 
and new Debian.

I've requested that the next FHS version should require /run and 
/var/run to be equivalent (in practice via a symlink or bind-mount or 
similar), originally in 
<https://web.archive.org/web/20250123180623if_/https://bugs.linuxfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1382> 
and subsequently moved to 
<https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/FHS/fhs-spec/-/issues/49>, and there 
doesn't seem to have been any opposition to that.

I suspect there are similar considerations for /var/lock, but I don't 
maintain anything that interacts with that directory, so I don't know 
the finer details of its history and uses.

     smcv