Are MySQL databases always stored in /var on CentOS?

Question

Are MySQL databases always stored in /var on CentOS?

Specifically - If a new CentOS/cPanel server that needs to support MySQL, doesn't have that partition, but only has these, does that mean MySQL data is somehow being stored in a temporary dump somewhere?

/dev/sda3              /
tmpfs                  /dev/shm
/dev/sda1              /boot
/usr/tmpDSK            /tmp

Solution 1

In your case /var is stored on /dev/sda3 as a subdirectory of /.

The default datadir for MySQL is /var/lib/mysql and as long as you do not change the configuration, the database files are stored in this directory.

Solution 2

In *nix, if a directory is not a separate mount then it is part of its parent mount. In this case, /var is considered part of /.

Comments

[Zoredache]

The data directory can be relocated if you really want/need to do that. So it may not be always stored under /var, but that is the standard location.

[inac]

Are there advantages to storing MySQL on /var ?