Re: cleaning /tmp directory
Am 31.03.2010 16:51, schrieb Tim:
Hi!
On Wed, 2010-03-31 at 15:58 +0200, Adalbert Prokop wrote:
> There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Fedora comes with tmpwatch,
> which does exactly what you want - scans /tmp (and possibly other
> directories) and deletes unused files.
Not quite... It will delete not recently looked at files, whether
you
actually used them or not. It's an important distinction, here's why:
I did not want to exaggerate the distinction between
creation/modification/access time - simplifications are helpful in
explanations. ;)
But yes, there is clearly a difference. Just listing the contents of a
directory will not change the file access time, but reading the files
surely will.
I've been careful to avoid doing any of that, and still find
/very/ old
files in the /tmp directory. I still haven't found out what's doing it.
I do not have those problems because my /tmp partition is encrypted and
recreated on every reboot with a random key. Another idea which might
help: create a script /sbin/halt.local which deletes all contents of
/tmp. Or calls tmpwatch which can pay attention to the modification
time. This way /tmp can be purged at least on every reboot - still, it
does not help on machines which are running for a long time.
--
bye
Adalbert