Do best-practices indicate that usage of /var should be restricted to sudoers I wrote a package, and would like to use `/var` to persist some data. The data I'm storing would perhaps even be thought of as an addition for `/var/db`. The pattern I observe is that files in `/var/db`, and the surrounds, are owned by `root`. The primary (intended) use of the package filters cron jobs - meaning you would need permissions to edit the crontab. 1. Should I presume a sudo install of the package? 2. Should I have the package gracefully degrade to a `/usr` subdir, and if so then which one? 3. If I 'opinionate' that any non-sudo install requires a `configrc` (with paths), where should the package look (presuming a shared-host environment) for that config file? 4. **Should I use`/usr/lib` as per the thoughts in this article?** Incidentally, this package is a ruby gem, and you can find it here.

If that package is installed as root it has access to `/var`.

If it's installed by a user (who can neither write to `/var` nor `/usr`) the default procedure is to set `--prefix=$HOME/somedir` in the `configure` script. Or you provide other means to set the directory to a location the user has write access to.