I'm having a weird problem on my box - my root partition keeps filling itself. I say this, because it is made of 20GB of which 15GB is spare; yet multiple times over the last couple of weeks the partition has suddenly completely filled. A quick investigation reveals that the /tmp directory is being filled until the disk is full; removing everything from the directory fixes the problem, but sometimes this is not possible before the system freezes and all processes refuse to start (meaning I can't even login as a console user to fix the problem).

Anyone got any ideas as to how and why this might be happening and how to avoid it, or determine what's causing it?

I'm on openSUSE 10.2, on a x84_64 system, if that's relevant. Incidentally, are there any ways of getting Linux to behave once the root partition starts running low on space, or ways to prevent it from filling entirely?

I dunno the reason of the partition filling up, you could investigate that in the syslog/klog or something.
Maybe you could use a cron/at job to periodically to check the output of "du /tmp" and clean out the /tmp.

tmpwatch is your friend.

tmpwatch looks like a good idea - but I'm convinced this is the result of a faulty process somewhere - it fills in minutes, not cumulatively over time.

kedar_damle - is there a log that specifically shows what is writing to the tmp directory?

This is precisely why it is a good idea to create separate partitions for both /tmp and /var. That way when processes go haywire, they don't create the same nasty DoS situation on your box.

Do you notice that /tmp starts to rapidly fill up when you're running a certain app?

What I would do is:

1. Keep a console open, and run the command This will hopefully help you quickly identify when your / partition begins filling up rapidly.

2. When the / partition does begin filling up again, run the command Then use the less pager to peruse through the open-tmp-files file and make a note of which COMMAND is writing large files there.

Then talk to that command sternly and make him sit in the corner for awhile.