Kevin McLauchlan writes: [...]
So... in general, is it safe to delete ANY file that's in /tmp?
From the LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Guide: "The /tmp directory is for the storage of temporary files. The contents are deleted on every system boot."
But I don't know if this is always the case.
Does anybody legitimately put stuff in /tmp that needs to survive from session to session?
I wouldn't. There are other places, such as /var and /var/tmp. (Or so says my guide - I don't profess to be an expert.) There's also ~/. And from an old linuxgazette article: "the file permissions [for /tmp]: drwxrwxrwt 10 root root 3072 May 18 21:09 /tmp/ We can see that everyone can write to this directory: everyone can create, rename or delete files and directories here. There is one limitation: the `sticky bit' is switched on. (Notice the t at the end of the first column.) This means a user can only delete or rename files owned by himself. This prohibits users peskering each other by removing the other one's temporary files." -K -- Kevin Pfeiffer International University Bremen