On Friday, March 11, 2011 10:15:49 am Richard Troth wrote:
> Mack said:
> > You might also note that according to the FHS, /tmp is only supposed to
> > be used by system processes. User-level processes are supposed to use
> > /var/tmp. But of course, many programs violate that. Still, you might
> > want to be cleaning up both directories.
>
> Yes ... keep an eye on /var/tmp also.
>
> I respect Ed, but I don't get this from my read of the FHS. In my
> experience, it's the reverse: users typically are aware of /tmp and
> use it and expect it to be available (without per-ID constraints as
> suggested in the MVS-OE thread), while /var/tmp may actually be better
> controlled (and less subject to clutter) and is lesser known to lay
> users. My read of this part of the FHS fits. They recommend that
> /var/tmp cleanup be less frequent than /tmp cleanup. (Content in
> /var/tmp is explicitly expected to persist across reboots.)
Well, that was from memory, so I probably did get it wrong. I've always
viewed /var/tmp as the place where you can mount a big filesystem for users to
play in, because /tmp may well be on the root filesystem and you don't want
that to fill up. Of course, Rick is right about users: they often write to
/tmp anyway. So I tend to also mount a separate filesystem on /tmp.
Personally, when I write a program or script that needs a temporary file, I
put it in /var/tmp. When I want to temporarily save a file as a user, I put
it in $HOME/tmp. That way I'm responsible for cleaning it up and it comes out
of my quota. I'll bet no one else does that. :-)
- MacK.
-----
Edmund R. MacKenty
Software Architect
Rocket Software
275 Grove Street - Newton, MA 02466-2272 - USA
Tel: +1.617.614.4321
Email: m...@rs.com
Web: www.rocketsoftware.com
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