>   thanks for all the replies concering this problem - turns out I 
>   was just being an idiot and letting the daily cron script toast
>   things behind my back. 

Well, I think the blame is on the `daily' script which, as shipped, clears
out a random directory. `/scratch' (unlike `/tmp') isn't mentioned in hier(7),
so it should be treated with caution by any utility that's shipped with the
system.

I think the "scratch" entry should be converted to a commented-out example
in /etc/daily.

-pk