Re: autoclean mode for tmpfs

[buhrow%lothlorien.nfbcal.org@localhost (Brian Buhrow)]

        Hello.  I don't know about others, but I rely heavily on the daily and
weekly scripts to clean out /tmp and /var/tmp, and have done so for many
years.  I'm always creating temporary files I don't need for long periods
of time, but don't want them to necessarily disappear immediately.  The
cleaners do this for me by insuring that if the files aren't access for 3
days in /tmp or 7 days in /var/tmp, they are magically removed.  I know
this behavior exists, and things that need to stay around permanently get
put in their appropriate location.  With the cleaner in place, I get a
grace period to decide whether it is permanent or not.
        It sounds like the cleaning scripts may need to be modified to clean
the common directory spaces more safely, but that the current filesysten
operations do provide a way for those scripts to  clean safely.  I'd rather
see the scrips changed to behave safely rather than a bunch of filesystem
calls and/or functional changes made at the filesystem level to solve a
problem which it seems could be argued may or may not exist in the current
environment.  I'm not a user of tmpfs, but I assume it implements the
sticky-bit append-only functionality of the ufs filesystems?  If not, then
perhaps putting that in place would solve most of the issues?

-Brian

On Aug 8,  8:48am, Iain Hibbert wrote:
} Subject: Re: autoclean mode for tmpfs
} On Sun, 7 Aug 2011, David Holland wrote:
} 
} > On Sun, Aug 07, 2011 at 06:29:01PM +0200, Marc Balmer wrote:
} >  > And what is auto-erasing files good for in the first place?  I don't get
} >  > the point, for me it's calling for trouble.
} >
} > Traditionally, it's so /tmp doesn't grow without bound, which once
} > upon a time was a problem with small root partitions or ramdisks.
} 
} What processes leave data in /tmp? perhaps they should be fixed instead,
} to clean up after themselves..
} 
} I actively use /tmp as a work area so I notice when it builds up, but I
} guess using things like magic symlinks to provide a per-user tmp storage
} (or however that works :) can hide the real size of /tmp in multi-user
} systems.
} 
} The biggest offender I see is that build.sh sometimes leaves /tmp/config.*
} directories around which I clean out, but not sure if thats only when it
} is interrupted or fails..
} 
} iain
>-- End of excerpt from Iain Hibbert