Clean up / filesystem

[bdsfbsd at att.net]

On Sun, 10 Oct 2010 07:34:40 -0400, Eitan Adler <lists at eitanadler.com>  
wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 8:40 AM, Mike Clarke
> <jmc-freebsd2 at milibyte.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Saturday 09 October 2010, Arthur Chance wrote:
>>
>>> Not if running an X desktop, as all sorts of things get stuck in /tmp
>>> that are needed. In single user mode it should be safe, and it
>>> probably is when simply running on the console.
>>>
>>> As a long term solution, if you wish to clear /tmp every reboot add
>>> clear_tmp_enable="YES"  # Clear /tmp at startup.
>>> to your /etc/rc.conf
>>
>
> You may also want to consider changing /tmp to be a TMPFS file system
>
> add the line
> tmpfs		/tmp	tmpfs	rw,mode=01777	0	0
>
> to /etc/fstab (and remove any other /tmp lines).
>
> A warning will come saying that it is highly experimental - but I've
> been running with it for a while now without any issues.
>

I have been using tmpfs (mount /tmp in memory instead of on the hard  
drive) on my netbook to save writes to the SSD, and have had no problems.

While there may be important stuff in /tmp at the moment you are running  
the system for some reason (like X, apparently), there shouldn't be  
anything in there that needs to survive a reboot, if that gives you an  
indication of the safeness of deleting things. That's my understanding, if  
I'm wrong I'd be interested to hear it.

Brian