From owner-freebsd-bugs Sat Nov 15 13:07:30 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id NAA05841 for bugs-outgoing; Sat, 15 Nov 1997 13:07:30 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-bugs) Received: from conductor.synapse.net (conductor.synapse.net [199.84.54.18]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id NAA05797 for ; Sat, 15 Nov 1997 13:07:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from evanc@synapse.net) Received: (qmail 17065 invoked from network); 15 Nov 1997 21:07:21 -0000 Received: from cello.synapse.net (199.84.54.81) by conductor.synapse.net with SMTP; 15 Nov 1997 21:07:21 -0000 Date: Sat, 15 Nov 1997 16:07:20 -0500 (EST) From: Evan Champion To: Steve Price cc: freebsd-bugs@hub.freebsd.org Subject: Re: misc/5054: /tmp not nuked on reboot In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sat, 15 Nov 1997, Steve Price wrote: > I guess that is a matter of preference really. I personally don't > clear /tmp on any of my machines, preferring to clean them manually. > I keep alot of stuff that I don't want toasted in /tmp and since > power outtages seem to happen frequently around here and I don't have > a UPS (yet) 'cleaning /tmp' is of no use to me. That doesn't mean > it is not the right thing to do in certain circumstances as I am > sure you can attest. I would guess that the premise is that having > to reboot a machine is a very infrequent occurrence (at least with > anything not MSoft that is) and doing this as a cron job will allow > the system administrator to choose the frequency with which cleanings > of /tmp occur and not leave it up to fate or some other ill-fated > reason. That's what /var/tmp is supposed to be for. The basis behind /tmp and /var/tmp is that /tmp is for very transient stuff that you don't care if it is lost during a reboot or by an auto-cleaner. This is why /tmp is often put on a tmpfs. /var/tmp is for stuff that is meant to be kept around, but is still temporary in nature. For example, a lot of programs core dump to /var/tmp. /var/tmp is never auto-cleaned nor purged on reboot. That is also why it is a very bad idea to symlink /tmp to /var/tmp. Instead, make /tmp a separate filesystem (tmpfs or otherwise), or symlink it to /usr/tmp. That's the way it's been with BSD for as long as I remember. It was like that at least with SunOS 4 if not earlier, and certainly has always been the case on BSD/OS. Evan