Temportay file deletion

[Pintu Bhagat]

what type of file can we delete if the /tmp get breached.

[MarkSyder]

The nature of the tmp directory is (or should be)that the files are temporary. In this instance, I always start by deleting anything over a week old:

cd /tmp
find . -mtime +7 -exec rm {}\;

If there's still a problem I look at the largest files:

ll|sort -k5,5nr|pg

Unless the file at the top is very new I would be inclined to get rid of it.

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[Ralph Grothe]

Does your question translate to,
is anything necessary to be recovered that used to be in a lost /tmp filesystem?
Maybe this will answer it a little.
On Solaris boxes the /tmp filesystem is merely part of swap,
which means that you get an autoclaen of its content whenever you reboot.

[Luk Vandenbussche]

It is /tmp so if the application are OK, you could remove everything.

You can also clear the tmp dir automaticaly at every reboot by changing the paramater

CLEAR_TMP in /etc/rc.config.d/clean_tmps

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

What find can be deleted depends on what is there and who owns it.

The general purpose of the directory is temp files and the directory is normally read-write-execute for all users.

What sometimes happens is congestion and applications not cleaning up after themselves.

Normally I handle it with a cron job that gets rid of files not accessed in the last 7 days.

SEP

[AwadheshPandey]

Managing /tmp and /var/tmp
-----------------------------------------

/tmp is one of those directories where everyone has access but few seem to
treat it with respect. /tmp is defined as a temporary storage area and is
not to be considered permanent. Processes like email or the vi editor use
the /tmp directory for files, but normal operations will cleanup afterwards
and not leave files in the /tmp directory. Some HP programs will leave
their logfile in /tmp, but this is considered correct practice in
that the logfile should be reviewed for errors, and then removed or archived.

There is a caveat that customers who are running Omniback should be
aware of. Omniback require that a file called CRS.pid exist in the /tmp
directory. Otherwise Omniback will not work.

One way to enforce cleanup of the /tmp directory is to use a command such as:

find /tmp -type f -atime +14 -exec rm {} \;

which will remove any files in /tmp (or files in directories below /tmp)
that have not been accessed in more than 14 days. The other temporary
storage area, /var/tmp, is less often abused by users since they overlook
it's existence. Again, some processes will create temporary files in
/var/tmp and should (if they terminate correctly) remove their files
and editors like vi use /var/preserve. This command
will clear up /var/tmp of files not accessed in more than 7 days:

find /var/tmp -atime +7 -exec rm {} \;

System administrators need to decide if /tmp should allow regularly accessed
files to stay in /tmp. A user might bypass the above tests by using the
touch command on the files. In this caase, change the -atime option to
-mtime which means that the file must be modified.

Once in a while, you may need to check for old directories which are not
removed by the above command. The contents will be cleared but after a
while, /tmp may get cluttered with empty directories.

Here's a possibility for files in directories. This combination purges
files that are older than 7 days, followed by a removal of the directory
if it hasn't been updated for 7 days. However, a simple rmdir is used
so the command will fail if the directory isn't empty. Thus, until all
files have been removed, the directory will stay.

find /tmp -type f -atime +7 -print -exec rm -f {} \;
find /tmp -type d -atime +7 -print -exec rmdir {} \;
find /var/tmp -type f -atime +7 -print -exec rm -f {} \;
find /var/tmp -type d -atime +7 -print -exec rmdir {} \;

Another common practice is to cleanup /var/tmp after every full backup.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

Everything depends on your management scheme. As noted, you can elect to automatically remove everything in the '/tmp' directory during reboot and startup, by setting CLEAR_TMP=1 in '/etc/rc.config.d/clean_tmps'.

Strictly speaking, according to standards [see the 'hier(5)' manpages], the '/tmp' directory is for *system* temporary files whereas '/var/tmp' is intended for *application* files.

My preference is not to automatically clean the '/tmp' directory, but periodically purge (manually and programatically) what I don't want. I don't want '/tmp' automatically cleaned upon reboot in order to preserve patch depots and/or individual patches that I may have staged there for installation following a reboot "health-check" prior to installation.

Regards!

...JRF...