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Date:      Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:03:20 -0800
From:      Devin Teske <devin.teske@fisglobal.com>
To:        "'Chuck Swiger'" <cswiger@mac.com>
Cc:        'FreeBSD -' <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   RE: One or Four?
Message-ID:  <021301ccedd0$b9c86400$2d592c00$@fisglobal.com>
In-Reply-To: <290E977C-E361-4C7D-8F1E-C1D6D03BAD63@mac.com>
References:  <4F3ECF23.5000706@fisglobal.com> <20120217234623.cf7e169c.freebsd@edvax.de> <20120217225329.GB30014@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> <021101ccedc9$89445cf0$9bcd16d0$@fisglobal.com> <290E977C-E361-4C7D-8F1E-C1D6D03BAD63@mac.com>

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chuck Swiger [mailto:cswiger@mac.com]
> Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 3:56 PM
> To: Devin Teske
> Cc: FreeBSD -
> Subject: Re: One or Four?
> 
> On Feb 17, 2012, at 3:11 PM, Devin Teske wrote:
> > a. A security issue
> >
> > /tmp is by-default out-of-the-box world-writable (perms 1777).
> 
> Yes.  It works as intended even when /tmp is part of a single root partition;
> although mounting /tmp as a RAM- or swap-based tmpfs filesystem might be
> better for many situations.
> 
> > Making this world-writable bucket part of "/" seems silly both for Desktops
and
> Servers alike.
> 
> You're welcome to your opinion.  However, I suspect you're expecting FreeBSD
> systems to always be partitioned and administered by knowledgeable BSD Unix
> sysadmins, and those are not always so readily available as one might assume.
> 
> > b. A nuisance
> >
> > As "Da Rock" points out, ... recovering your system from a
> > file-system-full-event when using "single-/" is just as difficult regardless
of
> > Desktop versus Server. Having "/tmp" alleviates the difficulty.
> 
> It would if /tmp was mounted on a disk partition, and if it also happened to
be
> where space was being consumed.

Actually, what I meant to say was:

If you have only "single-/" and your filesystem becomes full, having a separate
"/tmp" on the same physical medium can alleviate the issue of "having no space
to work" because you can mount "/tmp" (as the odds of both "/" and "/tmp"
filling up simultaneously and both becoming 100%-full is far-less likely to
occur than having a single partition fill up to max all). Thus, having a "/ +
/tmp" is infinitely wiser than "single-/ without /tmp (or any partition for that
matter)". The argument not necessarily being in favor of "/tmp", but being
dis-favorable against any scheme that involves only one partition which can
blindly be filled and leave the user (at least in a single-disk scenario) no
free space to do anything once-full.

This is somewhat different than what you were referring to, which is that having
"/tmp" simply for the sake of not allowing others to fill your system. Rather,
I'm arguing that "/tmp" also saves you by giving you somewhere to work if/when
you *DO* fill your "/".


>  /var/log and /home tend to be more likely
> locations in my experience, but YMMV.

-- 
Devin


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