I have installed a new command line utility. I downloaded it and compiled it successfully, and have made a symbolic link from my home/bin directory to the exectuable. I have (as root) done:


chmod 777 /tmp/


but when I run the new program (as me), it doesn't work:


[bananaman@servername]dosomething -h

Couldn't create temporary file in /tmp/


I don't understand this because surely if I anyone can write in that directory? I have checked:


[bananaman@servername]ls -l /

drwxrwxrwx 3 root root [date][time] tmp


What am I doing wrong?

Has nobody got any idea about this? I'm sure it's something quite simple but I can't work it out.

Dunno if it's simple. What app are you trying to run?

AFAIK /tmp needs the sticky bit: chmod 1777 /tmp
If that ain't doin it, and you're damn sure you got all the required configs, supplied the right flags, files and whatnot, (and double checked it all) then I'd run a strace on it: "strace -v -o <logfile> <dosomething flags, etc etc>", then peruse <logfile> for errors. If unsure, post here.

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The utilities I am installing are the swftools for manipulating Flash files.

Thanks for responding. From your response at least I can conclude that I'm not doing something completely stupid. I will try what you suggest.

Ok. I've solved it now. I think it was the chmod 1777 that did the trick. Thanks.

Just out of interest, is it best practice to solve this type of problem in this way? I mean, surely it is not good to have any directories that anyone can read or write anything in?

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Yes, anyone can read, but if you're exporting a sane umask from /etc/profile no other user should be able to write to your files.
If you're concerned with having a public tempdir, you change it so every human user uses it's ~/tmp in /etc/profile, like:
# Assert UID for human user accounts on not heavily populated boxen starts at 500:
if [ "${UID}" -gt "500" ]; then
TMP="$HOME/tmp"; TMPDIR=${TMP}; export TMP TMPDIR
fi
Watch out for unprivileged system user UID's >500 tho.
AFAIK there's also a PAM module out there that handles tmpdir creation.