Re: clearing out /tmp safely
On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 07:48:19PM -0600, Robert wrote:
>>
>>[root@mavis root]# /usr/sbin/tmpwatch 240 /tmp
>>
>>and I *still* have a bunch of old files in /tmp
>>
>>[root@mavis root]# find /tmp -ctime +10 | wc -l
>> 613
....
Y'know, I bet this is gonna turn out to be something really
simple that
I'm overlooking -- something in the same league as the infamous
logrotate problem a few years ago that caused the supply of inodes to
dry up in short order.
Try "stat" on these files and dirs there are four interesting dates
when thinking about files.
Creation: Access: Modify: Change:
I believe that "tmpwatch" is paying attention to the access time
stamp. So if you inspect a file you are accessing it (cat, wc,
virus-scanner...) and the access time will be reset.
Is that what is going on?
An tmpwatch interaction with the 'access' time and dirs makes sense
because of the checking for contents thus:
mkdir /tmp/AAA
stat /tmp/AAA
sleep 60
stat /tmp/AAA
ls /tmp/AAA
stat /tmp/AAA
--
T o m M i t c h e l l
/dev/null the ultimate in secure storage.