LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Andrew Burrow <alburrow@cs.adelaide.edu.au>
  To  : Alex Garner <alex@netcraft.com.au>
  Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 17:56:41 +0930

Re: Partitioning disks

Regarding linking /tmp to /var/tmp:


On Fri, 23 Jun 2000 Alex Garner <alex@netcraft.com.au> commented that
...

> I'll concede that /, /boot and /var are probably all you need (symlink
> /tmp to /var/tpm). Maybe with a /home in case you want to switch
> distributions.

I like this solution of making a /var partition and linking /tmp to
/var/tmp enough to do it on my machine, but recently I discovered that
the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard document makes a distinction between
the two temp directories.  Specifically, /tmp can be cleaned out on
every boot while /var/tmp is ``more'' persistent.

For myself, I decided that the distinction was irrelevant since there
did not seem to be any good reason to assume that a system will
regularily reboot, in which case ``more'' is a pretty dodgey term.

Any thoughts on this one?


Here are the sections from version 2.1:

3.11 /tmp : Temporary files

The /tmp directory shall be made available for programs that require
temporary files.  Although data stored in /tmp may be deleted in a
site-specific manner,it is recommended that files and directories
located in /tmp be deleted whenever the system is booted.  Programs
shall not assume that any files or directories in /tmp are preserved
between invocations of the program.

BEGIN RATIONALE
	IEEE standard P1003.2 (POSIX, part 2) makes requirements that
	are similar to the above section.  FHS added the
	recommendation that /tmp be cleaned at boot time on the basis
	of historical precedent and common practice, but did not make
	it a requirement because system administration is not within
	the scope of this standard.
END RATIONALE


5.12 /var/tmp : Temporary files preserved between system reboots

The /var/tmp directory is made available for programs that require
temporary files or directories that are preserved between system
reboots. Therefore, data stored in /var/tmp is more persistent than
data in /tmp.

Files and directories located in /var/tmp must not be deleted when the
system is booted. Although data stored in /var/tmp is typically
deleted in a site-specific manner,it is recommended that deletions
occur at a less frequent interval than /tmp.


--
  + Department of Computer Science,                 "There is no fate that
         University of Adelaide,                      cannot be surmounted
         Adelaide SA 5005, Australia                             by scorn."
  + alburrow@cs.adelaide.edu.au                               Albert Camus

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