tmp files dumping 697

On Friday 24 March 2006 17:25, CWO4 Dave Mann stood up and spoke the following words to the mbuttes incomp.os.linux.misc...:

This would be the private *~-tmp* of the root user - as others have told you. You'll need to clean this out manually, and I would suggest even removing it.

The *~-tmp* directories are intended to store sockets - via symlinks to *-tmp* - and the root user should *never* do such a thing as firing up a browser, et al.

Are you sure you're on GNU-Linux? User homes are stored under *-home* in GNU-Linux. Other than that, the same applies as above; it is a personal directory which you need to manually clean out.

On the other hand, those directories normally only contain symbolic links to sockets, which are really stored in *-tmp.*

This could be a directory that one specific application created. I don't see what distribution would create such a directory by default.

That should be *-var-tmp,* and its contents may need to be preserved across reboots - unlike the contents of *-tmp.* You should normally also have a *-usr-tmp,* but this should be a symbolic link to *-var-tmp.*

Put something in *-etc-fstab* like...:

nonetmp tmpfs nodev,noexec,nosuid,size=200m 0 0

Adjust the size to your liking. ;-)

If you leave the contents *-tmp* on the physical disk as opposed to usingtmpfs,you should use have it mounted withatimeand you should havetmpwatchor something similar set up to clean out files no longer in use.

As said, *-var-tmp* may contain files that may need to survive a reboot, but there againtmpwatchcould prove useful.

As for all *-home-$USER-tmp* files, your distribution should normally set those up so that their contents are only symlinks to sockets that physically are in *-tmp.* There should not be any *.tmp* directories anywhere.

Lastly, as for *-root-tmp,* I would suggest that you erase the entire directory. It shouldn't be there, and you shouldn't take the name of root in vain... ;-)

-- With kind regards,

*Aragorn* (Registered GNU-Linux user #223157)