*BSD News Article 71729


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: MFS - Why?
Date: 22 Jun 1996 11:25:20 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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nsayer@quack.kfu.com (Nick Sayer) wrote:

> It is sensible to keep /var/tmp/ and /tmp/ separate so they can be
> treated differently.

Not really.  The different policy for /tmp vs. /var/tmp is not that
useful as it seems at the first glance.  Cleaning /tmp at boot-time is
infact rather senseless on a long-living system (in particular,
relying on this as the only cleanup policy).

I have run machines with /var/tmp and /tmp being the same (on a
separate large file system), and i don't have any of my `serious'
(i.e. not just test-only) machines around that still clean /tmp at
boot-time.  I fail to see what i'm breaking with this policy. :-)

But as is getting obvious from this little discussion, all this is
mostly a matter of taste and local policy.  What's The Right Thing for
one site can be utterly wrong for another site.  I've just prepared a
small diff to commit to the sources, but it will only contain commented
out stuff about my policy, including an example on how to purge the
/tmp and/or /var/tmp directories on a regular basis.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)