[arch-projects] [initscripts][RFC] managing /tmp

[Thomas Bächler]

Am 18.05.2011 18:34, schrieb Tom Gundersen:
> First of all, this is what I took away from the discussion:
> 
> 1) /tmp should always be mounted as tmpfs (there are some really
> obscure scenarios when it should not be (if you have individual files
> larger than 256GB on it))

In low-memory environments, this can be problematic. I had a problem
with a third-party installer, because it extracted its files into /tmp.
I had 512MB RAM back then, so my /tmp was 256MB only, which was not
sufficient (I used no size= option, which was in Arch's default fstab
back then).

> 2) if /tmp is not mounted as tmpfs it should always be cleared at boot
> 
> That said, some users disagree, and want to /tmp to be preserved on
> reboot. Usually I would deny such a request, but I figured it would
> actually simplify things, so why not.

/tmp is not supposed to be preserved between reboots. Some distributions
do it (SuSE even leaves it entirely untouched by default, leading to 10
year old files in /tmp). If you want temporary files to be kept between
reboots, use /var/tmp/. In my opinion, cleaning /tmp is the right thing
to do.

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