Looking at pid files on my computer that remain in var after a bad system halt or power failure on my lappy brings me to this question about them. I know that the files are stored in var and are created and removed by each daemon or application and thus get left behind when a system crash / power failure/ halt occurs. What im wondering is could you make a temp space like via virtual file system or ram drive to store all the pids in then when you have a crash and hard reboot the pids are not there anymore. Why would this be bad and is there a reason for keeping them around like security or something?

I guess one good (I think it is) reason to keep them around is that
you'll definitely be alerted to the fact that there WAS a problem
if the processes you rely on don't start due to the existing PID files.


Cheers,
Tink