On 2011-08-07 18.38, David Holland wrote:
On Sun, Aug 07, 2011 at 06:29:01PM +0200, Marc Balmer wrote:
> And what is auto-erasing files good for in the first place? I don't get
> the point, for me it's calling for trouble.
Traditionally, it's so /tmp doesn't grow without bound, which once
upon a time was a problem with small root partitions or ramdisks.
Another possible use is for files you explicitly want to make
transient, like say /var/rwho (not that anyone uses rwhod any more) or
/usr/pkgsrc/packages or /var/crash or a subtree you point coredumps
into. Or whatever.
I use rwhod. :-)
And it would not be a good idea to clean that automatically. It also
gives information on how long a machine have been down...
But I can see the occasional use for files with an expire time. Not sure
that I'd use it, though. Cleaning out /tmp works fine using sticky bits
and the occasional manual cleaning, if needed, for me. Not that I can
remember actually ever having had to clean /tmp, but I bet I've done it
at some point.
Johnny
