what can be deleted safely in /tmp?
Hi people My /tmp directory is growing, but I have no idea what all the files and folders in it are for. On Win I just deleted the whole contents of the temp-directory from time to time. But here I have a lot of of stuff I don't know if I destroy something when I delete it, like folders beginning with "ssh-..." or "ksocket-...", "gconfd-...", YaST2-...", "gpg-..." etc., files of type "socket", PDF-Docs, simple text... Some of them are owned by root, others by me as a user. As it's the /tmp directory I tend to think that this data was only used temporarily and could be deleted, at least everything from the time before the last boot - but as a non-insider of all the Linux-secrets I prefer to ask you, what I can delete safely and where I'd better keep my hands off before I ruin my super running SUSE 10.0 ;-) thanks for your help. Daniel -- Daniel Bauer photographer Basel Switzerland professional photography: http://www.daniel-bauer.com special interest site: http://www.bauer-nudes.com
On Tue, 2006-03-07 at 13:30 +0100, Daniel Bauer wrote:
Hi people
My /tmp directory is growing, but I have no idea what all the files and folders in it are for.
On Win I just deleted the whole contents of the temp-directory from time to time. But here I have a lot of of stuff I don't know if I destroy something when I delete it, like folders beginning with "ssh-..." or "ksocket-...", "gconfd-...", YaST2-...", "gpg-..." etc., files of type "socket", PDF-Docs, simple text...
Some of them are owned by root, others by me as a user.
As it's the /tmp directory I tend to think that this data was only used temporarily and could be deleted, at least everything from the time before the last boot - but as a non-insider of all the Linux-secrets I prefer to ask you, what I can delete safely and where I'd better keep my hands off before I ruin my super running SUSE 10.0 ;-)
thanks for your help.
The only safe way to do so manually is by booting the rescue CD/DVD, mount the partition that contains the tmp dir and delete everything there. Be careful of where you are at before deleting anything. The other way is to edit /etc/sysconfig/cron and change the setting for cleaning tmp dirs. # cron.daily can check for old files in tmp-dirs. It will delete all #files not accessed for more than MAX_DAYS_IN_TMP. If MAX_DAYS_IN_TMP is #not set or set to 0, this feature will be disabled. # MAX_DAYS_IN_TMP="30" I have mine set to 30 days. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998
Am Dienstag, 7. März 2006 14:01 schrieb Ken Schneider:
The other way is to edit /etc/sysconfig/cron and change the setting for cleaning tmp dirs.
# cron.daily can check for old files in tmp-dirs. It will delete all #files not accessed for more than MAX_DAYS_IN_TMP. If MAX_DAYS_IN_TMP is #not set or set to 0, this feature will be disabled. # MAX_DAYS_IN_TMP="30"
I have mine set to 30 days.
Thank you, Ken. I've changed MAX_DAYS_IN_TMP in /etc/sysconfig/cron from "0" to "30" and will see what happens... (this is al very new to me) Daniel -- Daniel Bauer photographer Basel Switzerland professional photography: http://www.daniel-bauer.com special interest site: http://www.bauer-nudes.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Tuesday 2006-03-07 at 08:01 -0500, Ken Schneider wrote:
The only safe way to do so manually is by booting the rescue CD/DVD, mount the partition that contains the tmp dir and delete everything there.
Not really... you can delete anything belonging to a user that is not logged in, or who hasn't any process belonging to him running. Doing so at runlevel 1, as Mark said, is pretty safe. - -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFEDc9QtTMYHG2NR9URAoGgAJ96W0FYcK7xOh1wNiBlGat6vVBjsACcDRgC JFyaqJhwb056x+g7jxekJyM= =tz07 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Daniel Bauer wrote:
As it's the /tmp directory I tend to think that this data was only used temporarily and could be deleted, at least everything from the time before the last boot - but as a non-insider of all the Linux-secrets I prefer to ask you, what I can delete safely and where I'd better keep my hands off before
You can delete everything there. Just do it in single user mode. Mark
Daniel Bauer wrote:
As it's the /tmp directory I tend to think that this data was only used temporarily and could be deleted, at least everything from the time before the last boot - but as a non-insider of all the Linux-secrets I prefer to ask you, what I can delete safely and where I'd better keep my hands off before I ruin my super running SUSE 10.0 ;-)
You can configure Yast, to automagically delete old stuff from /tmp.
participants (5)
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Carlos E. R. -
Daniel Bauer -
James Knott -
Ken Schneider -
Mark Hounschell