Feature changed by: Per Jessen (pjessen) Feature #307510, revision 20 Title: Cron: set MAX_DAYS_IN_TMP different from 0 openSUSE-11.3: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Ricardo Gabriel Berlasso (rgbsuse) Description: By default, openSUSE set MAX_DAYS_IN_TMP and MAX_DAYS_IN_LONG_TMP to zero, which means /tmp and /var/tmp folders are never cleaned. New users do not know of this, and after a while their hard drives ends with a lot of “garbage”. People who need those files not to be removed for sure will know how to change this default value but many people who don't need those files will not know about them until a “disk full” warning appears. This is particularly true for netbooks and old computer with small drives. My proposal is to set cron defaults to periodically clean the /tmp and /var/tmp folders. Discussion: #1: Robert Davies (robopensuse) (2009-12-01 01:05:28) Agreed! Once with SuSE 8.2 I installed a machine for someone using it offsite, and I missed to change that; because /tmp was never cleared up sometimes login would fail, and it would fail strangely, and not in such a way that had me checking /tmp, so it was only when I got the machine back I noticed. Personally deleting files with policy something like, not accessed for 7 days, and that are older than 28 days in /tmp; or 1 month & 3 months in /var/tmp would be very conservative defaults, yet reduce maintenance for the "oblivious". #2: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2009-12-30 19:46:21) If it was not for tmpfs having a limited storage amount, I would simply mount a tmpfs onto /tmp. (Hey, IIRC, Solaris does that.) So yes, I too, agree here, to set the clean interval to non-zero. #3: Axel Braun (docb) (2010-02-08 17:29:56) Good idea, I'm tired of changing this all the time! +1 #4: Jean-Daniel Dodin (jdd) (2010-05-02 16:56:23) I just had the problem. 6+Gb in /tmp!!! The only thing I can se that could cause the problem was a dvd dl with mozilla. I let it yesterday night and on the morning couldn't find any result anywhere. I beg the partition filled and aborted the dl, but didn't remove the partial file. Don't know how to make apps *don't* use /tmp for such heavy job. May be it's not this, I had very restricted acces to the computer at the moment, so I removed all in /tmp and can't investigate more :-(. I use to make MAX_DAYS_IN_TMP = 7 at least a warning mail should be nice. Here, it's a "startx" error message that said "no place in /tmp" that made me find the clue #5: Per Jessen (pjessen) (2010-05-02 19:38:47) Please don't change the default - not emptying /tmp is a SAFE default, and with harddisks growing bigger every minute, saving space isn't even an argument. #6: Gerald Pfeifer (geraldpfeifer) (2010-05-03 10:17:27) We may want to treat /var/tmp and /tmp differently here and only empty /tmp by default. Even setting a very large default, one year or a couple of months, might make sense. #7: L. A. Walsh (lawalsh) (2010-05-03 10:32:23) I disagee Per -- having a temporary store that constantly fills up is a change from traditional unix behavior. We shouldn't rescind that unless you want to explain to those who've had the old behavior around for 10-15 years, why it should be changed. There's no compelling reason why both /tmp and /var/tmp shouldnt'be *pruned* on a daily basis. If they were any place other than the standard system /tmp, /var/tmp, I'd agree with you. But these are historically places that are cleared out after some period of disuse. I'd suggest: /tmp - 3 weeks for all but root; /var/tmp/ - 6 weeks for all but root. That should be plenty of time for someone to find somplace else to store something than in /tmp. It's called "tmp" for a reason. (If you want more permanent storage, use /perm (of course you may have to create the dir...:-))... While it isn't likely to affect any of my daily-use systems, it might affect test or lab systems, where I don't go over or review every parameter in /etc/sysconfig with a fine tooth comb. Most people won't due that, so better to give them safe defaults. Not keeping /tmp and /var/tmp cleaned out is NOT safe, as it doesn't provide any method of cleaning out those directories on what may be a smaller file system. We have log-rotate mechanisms to manage over- growing log messages, but nothing will manage tmp if we disable automatic 'old-file' deletion, which is standard for those directories (of all directories on the system, those two are two that are historically managed that way). + #11: Per Jessen (pjessen) (2010-05-04 11:21:18) (reply to #7) + Linda, I'm advocating NO change - that's the point. Changing the + retention time for /tmp etc is easily done manually, but changing the + openSUSE default to automatically start purging peoples file (temporary + or not) is not a safe change for little or no good reason. #8: Robin Knapp (rknapp) (2010-05-03 12:43:24) Mhh... now the package tmpwatch is default in M6 which drops a script in /etc/cron.daily. I wonder why they did not just change the variables but added a new package. There's still /etc/cron.daily/suse.de-clean-tmp which seems to do the same task #9: Michal Seben (mseben) (2010-05-03 16:06:30) I think we should drop old /etc/cron.daily/suse.de-clean-tmp and use instead of this tmpwatch - which has upstream, it is used also by other distros and has more features about sysconfig options : we could rework /etc/cron.daily/tmpwatch to read sysconfig options (from /etc/sysconfig/cron) used by suse.de-clean-tmp #10: Michal Vyskocil (mvyskocil) (2010-05-04 10:58:22) Hi all, I created a new FATE#309448 about change of the SUSE default behavior and /tmp - that is not about concrete technical solution, just about if it's widelly required, or not. https://fate.novell.com/309448 -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/307510