what to do with files in /tmp
My /tmp folder currently has 3,5 Gb! I just found this out when I was browsing in my computer, to see what takes up so much space.
Ok, so this should theoretically be a folder where programs store temporary files, and delete them automatically after a while, right? Well, in a folder in /tmp called kde-myusername I currently have, stored as *.tmp files: - most of the stuff I previewed in Ark, athough the archives they were originating from have been deleted a few months ago - pictures, pdf's and web pages that I viewed in konqueror - all log files of konqueror crashes - about 20 files called amarok followed by various letters and numbers, containing only Quote:
- and, what takes up most space, all the video clips I have stored on cd's that I have ever viewed using various movie players, mostly kaffeine. There are mostly only parts of the clips. This are probably more newbie questions, but still I am asking it here. 1. Does it HAVE to store all these files? 2. Can I configure it to delete what it doesn't need anymore automatically? Or do I have to delete the files manually every time? If so, what do I do, just delete every *.tmp file there? 3. I also have 2 .xkm files in there. What are these used for? Any help/info is appreciated. Thank you for reading this. |
Quote:
24/7 you'll have to start thinking about house-keeping yourself... Answering #1) No, it doesn't. #2) A script run from a cron-job will be fine. I'd suggest something that makes sure the files you're about to delete aren't being used anymore. find -atime +7 -type f -exec rm -rf {} \; will be fine. #3) no idea - pass. Did you ask google, our best friend? Cheers, Tink |
Thanks for the quick reply.
No, I don't keep my machine up 24/7. I close it every night, but it doesn't seem to clean /tmp at a reboot or shutdown. I was thinking about cron too, if there is no other way. One more question. What do the parameters after rm do? ( -rf {} \; ) the man pages don't offer much info. Isn't there a program that does this at boot time or shutdown, when no programs that might use it are running? Also, I'm a bit afraid to remove everything in temp, even the files that haven't been used for a while, because of numerous people who claim that they deleted a file in /tmp and Linux got messed up, and none ever figured out why that happened. Maybe I'm just paranoid. I want to also find out first why it still keeps files last accessed over 6 months ago. The .xkm file, according to dear ol' google is a "compiled keymap file", generated by a program called xkbcomp, which I don't seem to have installed. Any ideas anyone? |
I had the same problem. I added a line to my shutdown script:
rm -rf /tmp/* /var/tmp/* This gets rid of all 'visible' files whenever the machine is shut down. I have had no problems with deleting it all. Regards, Bill |
Thanks, I'll just put them in the trash and see what happens, then if nothing bad happens, I'll just write a cron job or something.
|
Quote:
|
ok, thanks, I'll just leave /var/tmp alone, as it doesn't occupy much space...
My main concern is just /tmp. As long as nothing can go wrong there, it's ok. |
Quote:
Think of it as grouped like this. -exec tells find to run command & params against anything it found; {} is the placeholder for the path&name of the matching results; \; is an escaped ; that terminates the exec, the \ is there so the shell doesn't think it's a command-separator. Quote:
kind of activity to the discretion of the root user; Debian (and most of its derivates) will have an /etc/init.d/bootclean that's run during startup after mounting the file-systems. It's been too long that I last actively used any dead-rat based distro to be able to tell you how they do it :} and I can't get to the SuSE machines at work from home ;} Cheers, Tink |
Thanks again.
I looked in /etc/init.d and it does have a script called boot.clean, and, according to my low knowledge of shell scripting, it does remove some of the files in /tmp, but not all, specifically not the ones in /tmp/kde-dark (where dark is my username), or /tmp/kde-root (but that folder is mostly empty anyway,as I don't spend much time as root). Anyway, for the ones curious enough, and patient enough to read, this is what that script contains: Quote:
While trying to find an answer for myself, I found /etc/init.d/README, which has this statement: " After system startup, /sbin/init will normally switch on the default run level given in /etc/inittab. It calls the run level master script /etc/init.d/rc to start or stop services provided by the other scripts under /etc/init.d/. Both scripts, then boot level master script /etc/init.d/boot and the the run level master script /etc/init.d/rc starts all other boot or runlevel scripts either sequential or partial parallel within their dependencies order." I took a fast look in all the scripts/files mentioned, but none seemed to execute boot.cleanup. I will look more in detail in them, taking the scripts line by line to understand how it works one of the following days. I also think I am an idiot for not checking when boot.cleanup was last accessed before opening it with kwrite. But I'll look if it will have been accessed when I will reboot my computer. Anyway, does anyone know a quick answer to this? What do I have to edit for a script to be executed at startup? Sorry for the long post. Any ideas anyone? |
Quote:
Reals rc scripts are in directories named rc2.d rc3.d etc, and starts with either an uppercase S or an uppercase K. |
Quote:
|
check if this line (clear_tmp_enable="YES")is in /etc/rc.conf
you can add a command to crontab to clear the /tmp: */120 * * * * root cd /tmp;rm * |
Quote:
Never do that. Edit: I hope everyone understand why, as I had no reaction to this post ... |
Quote:
Quote:
But thanks, this is an interesting concept I haven't learned anything about so far. I could find other uses for a tmpfs... Off topic, does anyone have a good howto link? |
Quote:
Quote:
You can put a 700MB file in tmpfs with 512MB of RAM, as tmpfs is backed by virtual memory, but you won't have any improvement because the system would paginate quite a lot during the file creation. |
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 04:53 AM. |