/tmp filesystem full

[Robert Bonomi]

> From owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org  Wed Aug 22 05:59:52 2012
> Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 12:59:13 +0200
> From: Andy Wodfer <wodfer at gmail.com>
> To: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
> Subject: /tmp filesystem full
>
> Hi,
> I have about 500MB in my /tmp and it seems to be too small when the
> periodic LOCATE script runs every week.
>
> What's the best way to increase the size of /tmp ? Could I simply remove it
> and create a symbolic link ln -s to say /usr/tmp instead (where I have
> several hundred GBs free)?

That is a BAD IDEA(tm)!

There are appliations that assume /tmp, /var/tmp, and /usr/tmp are _distinct_
directories.  They will create files _with_the_same_name_ in two of those
'temp' locations, expecting them to be unique.o

It _is_ OK to symlink /tmp to 'somewhere else', with the caveat that it
"should" be on the '/' filesystem -- one may need it in single-user mode
befoe other filesystems are mounted.  You can 'live dangerously' and 
symlink to a dir on a different filesystem and _probably_ not have 
problems.