Re: /tmp running out of space

[Joachim Backes <joachim.backes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael A. Peters wrote:
> Anne Wilson wrote:
> > On Sunday 07 January 2007 11:33, Steve Searle wrote:
> > > Around 11:20am on Sunday, January 07, 2007 (UK time), Anne Wilson 
> > > scrawled:
> > > > On Sunday 07 January 2007 11:03, Ed Greshko wrote:
> > > > > Anne Wilson wrote:
> > > > > > /tmp is filling up rapidly.  I'm guessing that it would be safe
> > > > > > enough to delete everything dated previous to the last bootup.  Am I
> > > > > > right?
> > > > > The most logical question is, what is /tmp filling up with?  I can't
> > > > > say that in a normally operating system I've seen /tmp filling up
> > > > > "rapidly" without a cause and I'm not the one to go willy-nilly
> > > > > deleting things without known why they are being created.
> > > > Duh! I mis-read the logfile line.  It's not really filling up, though
> > > > there are things that I think should be deleted.
> > > Anne,
> > >
> > > I run the following command in a cron job:
> > >
> > >     tmpwatch --mtime --verbose --verbose 168 /tmp
> > >
> > > You may not want the --verbose, and check the manpage for the --mtime
> > > option, but basically this deletes all files in /tmp that have not been
> > > modified for 168 hours or more.
> > I have a problem, Steve.  Running that command from a root konsole 
> > works fine, so I set it to run as a cron job every Wednesday.  Now I 
> > find that from both boxes where I set this up I'm getting root emails 
> > that say
> >
> > /bin/sh: tmpwatch: command not found
> >
> > What could be wonrg?

tmpwatch is /usr/sbin/tmpwatch. Is /usr/sbin in your path in the cronjob?

> > Anne
>
> I personally prefer to use tmpfs
>
> in /etc/fstab :
>
> tmpfs   /tmp    tmpfs   nosuid,noexec,size=256m,mode=1777 0 0
>
> That way /tmp does not use any physical disk space - and is wiped every 
> time I reboot.
>
> size=256m is optional - w/o it though, it can use up to half of your 
> physical ram. A 256m /tmp is more than plenty.
>
> The only drawback - if you download files larger than the available 
> space in the /tmp filesystem via firefox - the download will fail 
> because firefox assembles it in /tmp. You can change that in Firefox 
> preferences - but I prefer to grab large files via wget rather than 
> firefox download manager.
>
> With a 256 MB /tmp - I rarely use more than 1% of it.
> With /tmp in memory - the disk arm doesn't have to move to write/read 
> temp files, they are read out of memory.


--
Joachim Backes <joachim.backes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
University of Kaiserslautern,Computer Center [RHRK],
Systems and Operations, High Performance Computing,
D-67653 Kaiserslautern, PO Box 3049, Germany
--------------------------------------------------
Phone: +49-631-205-2438, FAX: +49-631-205-3056

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