Location of ini config files in linux unix

Question

Two questions  really    Is there a standard convention regarding the placement on configuration files     For system or quasi-system programs they seem to usually be somewhere in  etc   It seems less clear for plain application programs or programs with insufficient privileges for  etc  In processing program options is there a standard hierarchy of what takes precedence   E g  does a command line option override an initialization file and or an environment variable   Vice versa   Or is this entirely up to the developer

User · Answer

1  No  unfortunately   Edit  The other answers are right  per-user configuration is usually stored in dot-files or dot-directories in the users home directory  Anything above user level often is a lot of guesswork    2  System-wide ini file -  user ini file -  environment -  command line options  going from lowest to highest precedence

User · Answer

You should adhere your application to the XDG Base Directory Specification  Most answers here are either obsolete or wrong   Your application should store and load data and configuration files to from the directories pointed by the following environment variables     XDG DATA HOME  default    HOME  local share    user-specific data files   XDG CONFIG HOME  default    HOME  config    user-specific configuration files   XDG DATA DIRS  default    usr local share   usr share     precedence-ordered set of system data directories   XDG CONFIG DIRS  default    etc xdg    precedence-ordered set of system configuration directories   XDG CACHE HOME  default    HOME  cache    user-specific non-essential data files    You should first determine if the file in question is    A configuration file   XDG CONFIG HOME  XDG CONFIG DIRS   A data file   XDG DATA HOME  XDG DATA DIRS   or A non-essential  cache  file   XDG CACHE HOME     It is recommended that your application put its files in a subdirectory of the above directories  Usually  something like  XDG DATA DIRS  lt application gt  filename or  XDG DATA DIRS  lt vendor gt   lt application gt  filename   When loading  you first try to load the file from the user-specific directories   XDG   HOME  and  if failed  from system directories   XDG   DIRS   When saving  save to user-specific directories only  since the user probably won t have write access to system directories    For other  more user-oriented directories  refer to the XDG User Directories Specification  It defines directories for the Desktop  downloads  documents  videos  etc

User · Answer

Typically in a dotfile  like  myprogramrc  in the user s home directory  It is of course up to the programmer but normally command line arguments override everything else  If environment variables are used it is usually as an alternative to the command line arguments or to specify where the configuration is located

User · Answer

For user configuration I ve noticed a tendency towards moving away from individual    myprogramrc to a structure below    config  For example  Qt 4 uses    config  lt vendor gt   lt programname gt  with the default settings of QSettings  The major desktop environments KDE and Gnome use a file structure below a specific folder too  not sure if KDE 4 uses    config  XFCE does use    config

User · Answer

Newer Applications  Follow XDG Base Directory Specification usually    config yourapp   can be INF  JSON  YML or whatever format floats your boat  and whatever files    yourapp should match your executable name  or be namespaced with your organization company username handle to    config yourorg yourapp    Older Applications  Per-user configuration  usually right in your home directory         yourapp file for a single file    yourapp  for multiple files   data usually in    yourapp config   Global configurations are generally in  etc appname file or  etc appname  directory   Global App data   var lib yourapp   Cache data   var cache   Log data   var log yourapp     Some additional info from tutorialhelpdesk com  The directory structure of Linux other Unix-like systems and directory details   In Windows  almost all programs install their files  all files  in the directory named   Program Files  Such is not the case in Linux  The directory system categorizes all installed files  All configuration files are in  etc  all binary files are in  bin or  usr bin or  usr local bin  Here is the entire directory structure along with what they contain     - Root directory that forms the base of the file system  All files and directories are logically contained inside the root directory regardless of their physical locations    bin - Contains the executable programs that are part of the Linux operating system  Many Linux commands  such as cat  cp  ls  more  and tar  are locate in  bin   boot - Contains the Linux kernel and other files needed by LILO and GRUB boot managers    dev - Contains all device files  Linux treats each device as a special file  All such files are located in  dev    etc - Contains most system configuration files and the initialisation scripts in  etc rc d subdirectory    home - Home directory is the parent to the home directories of users    lib - Contains library files  including loadable driver modules needed to boot the system    lost found - Directory for lost files  Every disk partition has a lost found directory    media - Directory for mounting files systems on removable media like CD-ROM drives  floppy disks  and Zip drives    mnt - A directory for temporarily mounted filesystems    opt - Optional software packages copy install files here    proc - A special directory in a virtual filesystem  It contains the information about various aspects of a Linux system    root - Home directory of the root user    sbin - Contains administrative binary files  Commands such as mount  shutdown  umount  reside here    srv - Contains data for services  HTTP  FTP  etc   offered by the system    sys - A special directory that contains information about the devices  as seen by the Linux kernel    tmp - Temporary directory which can be used as a scratch directory  storage for temporary files   The contents of this directory are cleared each time the system boots    usr - Contains subdirectories for many programs such as the X Window System    usr bin - Contains executable files for many Linux commands  It is not part of the core Linux operating system    usr include - Contains header files for C and C   programming languages   usr lib - Contains libraries for C and C   programming languages    usr local - Contains local files  It has a similar directories as  usr contains    usr sbin - Contains administrative commands    usr share - Contains files that are shared  like  default configuration files  images  documentation  etc    usr src - Contains the source code for the Linux kernel    var - Contains various system files such as log  mail directories  print spool  etc  which tend to change in numbers and size over time    var cache - Storage area for cached data for applications    var lib - Contains information relating to the current state of applications  Programs modify this when they run    var lock - Contains lock files which are checked by applications so that a resource can be used by one application only    var log - Contains log files for different applications    var mail - Contains users  emails    var opt - Contains variable data for packages stored in  opt directory    var run - Contains data describing the system since it was booted    var spool - Contains data that is waiting for some kind of processing    var tmp - Contains temporary files preserved between system reboots

User · Answer

Generally system global config is stored somewhere under  etc  User-specific config is stored in the user s home directory  often as a hidden file  sometimes as a hidden directory containing non-hidden files  and possibly more subdirectories     Generally speaking  command line options will override environment variables which will override user defaults which will override system defaults

User · Answer

Please do also consult the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

[linux] Location of ini/config files in linux/unix?

Examples related to linux

Examples related to unix

Examples related to configuration