[Devil-Linux-discuss] User Software Installations / Locations in DL / GCC / Errors on save-config

[Dom <dl...@ed...>]

What is best practice for where to place a 'user installation' of 
software in DL, or configuration files for such software? I use a hard 
disk and this gives me an /opt directory, so it seems logical to put 
programs in a subdirectory off this directory (e.g. /opt/pdfmeld), or 
where the program is a single file, in /opt itself. Is this right? For 
users who do not have a hard disk, where is the 'correct' place to put 
their own scripts or additional working programs? I guess somewhere that 
is backed up with save-config but causes minimum aggravation when DL is 
updated - maybe /root?

What about user software configuration files? The usual location (as 
used by 'configure') seems to be /etc, which will be backed up by 
save-config, but I am not sure if this is good practice or whether they 
would be better stored in /opt/[program_name]? Or somewhere else?

To be honest I am confused as to which directories in DL are located on 
the installation media (i.e. read-only), which are in RAM but are saved 
by save-config (I think: /etc/* and /root/*), which are in RAM and lost 
on reboot (I think: everything in /var except where a volume group in a 
'devil-linux' LV on hard disk is auto-mounted to a subdirectory e.g. 
/var/log).

Is it possible in DL to compile and install software from source? I 
can't find GCC - is it meant to be there?

Lastly, there are a couple of error messages that I get when running 
save-config (using testing release 1.3.6-2008-09-10):

tar: etc-mods/samba/lock: file changed as we read it
failed to save configuration

and

chmod: changing permissions of `/var/adm/mount/etc-mods.tar.bz2': 
Operation not permitted
Configuration saved


The first is fatal while the second I know relates to VFAT (FAT16) 
format on the configuration media.

Thanks for any help!

Dom