i can't understand why kde keeps filling my /tmp and /var/tmp dirs with data from users activities, why not put this stuff in the user's home folder? this is beyond me, it recalls me of some stuff from redmond which can't help to spread files recording your activity across the HD... besides joking, is there a technical explanation as to why stuff like kdecache-<user> (for example) should livee there? what's worse this leaves trails of deleted user accounts, which have to be manually removed, and most of the times this dirs contain sensible data such as internet cache etc...

yea future kde versions might have this stuff in a different place so it doesn't get cleaned for a faster boot
you can set it if you want with
export KDETMP=/path/to/wherever
in your .profile
the one in /var/tmp is konqueror and i don't know how to change
these directories are drwx------ so no one can look at them but user
as to why -- it's where tmp files are suposed to go -- in /tmp (duh) and after boot larger tmp files are suposed to go in /var/tmp

If you have a gigabyte of swap space or more, you can use tmpfs for /tmp /var/tmp. In your /etc/fstab add or change

The problem is you have to tell users that files will be remove upon every boot up. Another problem is Linux will still cache tmpfs, so you will lose some memory.

thanks for your replies, I'll go about setting tmpfx support on this box, looks like an elegant solution!

i personally think putting this stuff (especially internet cache) in ram instead of on disk is a HUGE security risk.

anybody else with an opinion on that ?