Recomended places and practices to store files generated from a Tomcat application?

Question

this is relative to tomcat + spring + linux. I am wondering what could be a good practice and place to store files. My idea is to put everything on the filesystem then keep track of them using the DB. My doubt is WHERE? In fact I could put everything in the webapp directory, but that way some good collegue or even me, could forget about that and erase everything during a clean+deploy. The other idea is to use a folder in the filesystem... but in Linux which one would be standard for this? More than this, there is the permission problem, I assume that tomcat runs as the tomcat user. So it can't create folders around in the filesystem at will. I'd have to create it by myself using root user and then changing the owner.... There is nothing wrong with this, but I'd like to automate the process, so that no intervention is needed. Any hints?

Answer 1

The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard defines standard paths for different kinds of files. You don't make it absolutely clear what kind of files you're storing and how they're used. At least

• /srv/yourappname
• /var/lib/yourappname

would be appropriate.

As for the privileges, you'll either have to create the directories with proper privileges during installation. If that's impossible, settle for the webapps directory.