/tmp filling up

Randux · 03-11-2006, 03:23 PM

I did my usual df -h and I saw that my system had grown 1.2 G from its former happy size over the past week. WTF!?

I cruised around until I found 1.2G worth of stuff on /tmp.

I was in a good mood, so I blasted all of it. Luckily, the system still comes up fine.

How are you guys managing /tmp? I have logrotate working fine (FYI for new guys, you have to force it once to set the dates or it won't ever work) and so that part is under control.

Thanks,
Randux

win32sux · 03-11-2006, 08:00 PM

the /tmp contents on my PC get cleared upon proper reboot/shutdown - i added a couple lines to /etc/rc.d/rc.0 in order for that to happen... of course on a server this wouldn't be the right approach...

Randux · 03-11-2006, 08:18 PM

It's a desktop dev machine. Which "couple lines" did you add?

Can you just do a rm -r /tmp/* Or did you have another trick?

Thanks,
Rand

win32sux · 03-11-2006, 10:00 PM

yeah, i just added a couple rm commands (one for hidden files/dirs), like:

Code:

echo "Clearing /tmp ..."
rm -fr /tmp/* 2> /dev/null
rm -fr /tmp/.* 2> /dev/null

i inserted them right before the "Turn off swap, then unmount local file systems" line which is near the end...

cs-cam · 03-11-2006, 10:03 PM

If you use tmpfs for /tmp then it automatically is cleared on reboot. Is there a reason you don't have it setup like that?

win32sux · 03-11-2006, 10:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cs-cam

If you use tmpfs for /tmp then it automatically is cleared on reboot. Is there a reason you don't have it setup like that?

i can't speak for randux, but the reason i don't use shmfs/tmpfs on my box's /tmp is cuz i do a lot of stuff in /tmp and i really don't want that stuff to impact my RAM...

phil.d.g · 03-12-2006, 03:23 AM

I do similarly to win32sux for the desktop, on the server I delete all files not accessed for 7 days

win32sux · 03-12-2006, 03:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by phil.d.g

I do similarly to win32sux for the desktop, on the server I delete all files not accessed for 7 days

that's pretty cool man...

could you show us what the commands look like?? you run them using cron, right??

EDIT: i was just thinking and i figured perhaps you're doing something like this (i'm not sure):

Code:

find /tmp -atime 7 -exec rm -f {} \;

i believe running something like that about once a day from cron might do the trick??

phil.d.g · 03-12-2006, 04:31 AM

Yeah, though I'm not sure if you had a structure like

/tmp
/tmp/foo
/tmp/foo/bar.txt

and bar.txt was accessed or edited if /tmp and /tmp/foo would be marked as accessed, so I also do a check for if a file is a directory

Code:

find /tmp -regex '^/tmp/.*' -atime +6 | sort -r \
| while read file; do
        if [ -d "$file" ]; then
                rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty "$file"
        else
                rm -f "$file"
        fi
done

The regex means that the dir /tmp will never be deleted, otherwise if it hasn't been accessed for 7 days and it was empty it would be deleted. Of course that would fail if the search path '/tmp' had a trailing slash. Also 6 instead of 7 because find ignores fractional days.

For reference, on the workstation in rc.shutdown (arch) I have

Code:

rm -rf /tmp && mkdir -m0777 /tmp

win32sux · 03-12-2006, 04:49 AM

hey thanks for that script man!! it's very useful stuff!!

question about your rc.0/rc.shutdown line: why no sticky bit?? just curious...

question #2: my server's filesystems (reiserfs v3) get mounted with the "noatime" option... does that make the find by atime not doable??

Code:

/dev/hda1        /                reiserfs    defaults,noatime 0   0

phil.d.g · 03-12-2006, 05:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by win32sux

question about your rc.0/rc.shutdown line: why no sticky bit?? just curious...

I think that may be a side affect of trying to do an install at 3 in the morning and keep saying to myself: "If I can just get to point X, then I'll be happy and go to bed". I've never picked up on it since. However I've changed it now, thanks for pointing it out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by win32sux

question #2: my server's filesystems (reiserfs v3) get mounted with the "noatime" option... does that make the find by atime not doable??

From what I understand no, two solutions spring to mind though. Either use the last modified property (mtime I think), or better IMHO (which is what I do) have /tmp on a separate partition and don't use noatime for that partition

win32sux · 03-12-2006, 05:17 AM

cool! thanks!

Randux · 03-12-2006, 11:38 AM

Thanks guys, I'll look into this. I hadn't changed anything from the vanilla 10.2 install.

Regards,
Randux

Woodsman · 03-12-2006, 06:38 PM

Possibly this mini how-to will help:

Removing Temporary Files and Clutter

Randux · 03-12-2006, 07:29 PM

Thanks, I think the vanilla rm * will work for my setup.