This is one of those "been bothering for years"-problems with Mandriva. It keeps on cleaning my /tmp folder.

I've uninstalled msec (because that kept on changing the folder rights wrong for the network drives), but I can't seem to figure out which service is it that always removes the temporary files. The files don't disappear under other distributions, like Ubuntu.

Many programs like OpenOffice.org and some specialized software I am using, are putting their files in /tmp and when Mandriva erases them, the programs won't work properly.

What can I change or uninstall to change this annoying behaviour?

Does you /tmp have the sticky bit set?

It does:
Mandriva has some service/program going through /tmp and deleting files that are N minutes old. Maybe it runs from crontab, I don't know. I am using crontab myself, so I can't disable it completely...

In Mandriva Control Center, go to the "Startup" tab (near the end), click "Configure system startup", unroll the "Advanced" settings, uncheck the "Empty /tmp at each startup" checkbox.
This is all translated from French; labels may differ.

Yves.

That setting is related to the tmpfs filesystem for /tmp and already unchecked.

I don't need the system to retain the temporary files at reboot, my problem is that Mandriva keeps continuously deleting the files while running.

More information about the issue:

Mandriva seems to delete temporary files periodically only from the users' tmp folders (/home/user/tmp), not from /tmp itself. The users' tmp folders also have the sticky bit set.

I created an empty file to there and in 15 minutes it was gone. Same with OpenOffice.org, the program started to fail saving after about 15 minutes (due to its required temporary files missing).

Hi, I'd suggest that you configure those programs to have their own folder, custom install options.

That should negate the problem you have if it is a mandriva setting, It has never happend to me like that, I generally have to empty it my self when it gets too big (Mb's)

I have found msec to be very very useful, even though attacks are rare.

regards, Glenn

ps, check out the sweeper app. and it's config. Available with newer releases of mandriva. 2009.0.rc1

I can configure my programs, but my friends and customers will still keep on having the same problems, unless I configure every program on their Mandrivas as well.

This problem was also reported as a bug on the OpenOffice.org site. A workaround is to simply change the program's temp folder, but the actual solution would be to find the Mandriva service that keeps emptying the temp folders. But I can't find the service from crontab.

Does mandriva use tmpfs (i.e. could that be a feature of the file-system)?

When you open a file in /tmp and wait for the eerie deleter there should be a collision of rights. What I mean is, usually a second process can't wrest control away from another. So there might at least some error in one of the logs -- sorry, no better idea here...

That is actually a possibility. It does use tmpfs.

I can't find anything regarding to this from my logs. I googled for tmpfs and didn't find so far anything about a feature deleting files older than N minutes, but I think that might be the best shot so far.

Does anyone have information on tmpfs, whether it has this kind of functionality?

On SuSE, you can change a setting to have files in /tmp deleted if they are older then a certain amount. Mandriva may be doing the same thing.

On SuSE, this is performed in a cron job and configured in /etc/sysconfig/cron. You might try looking there or in your cron jobs. Look in MCC for a cron wizard as well.

I've gone through /etc/cron*, my own cron jobs and everything related in MCC, but I can't find any job that deletes the files in tmp folders. crontab is the only scheduling daemon I run.

Could it be hard-coded in tmpfs? Any option for /etc/fstab to disable the feature?

And then there is tmpwatch:

http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/linuxcommand....tmpwatch8.html

Maybe that is of help...

I renamed /usr/sbin/tmpwatch to something else so the system wouldn't find and run it.

Let's see what happens...

Once again, the files and folders I created disappeared... even with tmpwatch "removed". This is weird, what service is it deleting my temporary files?