/tmp filesystem full

[Steve O'Hara-Smith]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2012 08:14:35 -0500 (CDT)
Robert Bonomi <bonomi at mail.r-bonomi.com> wrote:

> > 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

	/usr/tmp usually does not exist so creating it and
symlinking /tmp to it is OK.

> 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.

	A null mount would be a safer way of pushing /tmp onto /usr or
indeed any other filesystem - that way when the null mount fails the mount
point is still a directory. There's really no point in linking it elsewhere
on the same filesystem.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN                                      | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins.                |    licences available see
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    http://www.sohara.org/