I have encountered a problem of creating files and removing files from /tmp directory as a root.

For example an attempt to copy a file from a different directory gets an error message as follows:

[root@panther tmp]# cp /etc/resolv.conf

cp: cannot create regular file './resolv.conf': Permission denied

Similar error message occurs in attempting to create a file with vi .

I have checked the available space and there seems to be plenty

[root@panther tmp]# df /tmp
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 495828 344398 125831 74% /

If this is what you typed, you tried to cp resolv.conf onto itself. It doesn't allow me to execute that command because of a missing destination. try

cp   /etc/resolv.conf   ./
from within /tmp. You didn't specify the ./ destination

My apologies .. ommitted the dot at the end .. meaning the command I typed looks like this

[root@panther tmp]# cp /etc/resolv.conf .

I only use this to demonstrate a point that /tmp directory can't be written and some apps are failing because of this. It should be quite clear that I really don't need to copy resolv.conf to /tmp directory.

What does "ls -ld /tmp" (no quotes) have to day? I suspect it's permissions problems, in which case, "chown root:root /tmp ; chmod 1777 /tmp" (again no quotes) should set things right again.

Only if it were that simple .. ls -ld /tmp displays following

drwxrwxrwt 8 root root 1024 Jan 31 04:12 /tmp/


I think this is exactly what it should be ..

What does df -i /tmp say?

You may be out of inodes rather than raw disk space.

Interesting point .. but this doesn't seem to be case

df -i /tmp yields following

Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 128016 44443 83573 35% /

Well, I honestly don't know what could be the problem. Have you run fsck on the partiion recently? I'd suggest using a live CD if you can. Other than that, I'm fresh out of ideas.