Autoclear of /tmp on reboot

[hpuxrox]

I know about editing /etc/rc.config.d/clean_tmps to activate. I am looking for recommendations for autoclearing /tmp on a system reboot.

Such as,

1. Why would it need to be done.
2. Why isn't it set that way on default.
3. etc....

Thanks,

Yates

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

I like to turn it on.. but:

> 1. Why would it need to be done.

Save space?

> 2. Why isn't it set that way on default.

Because I turned it on once, and got loads of emails from angry users saying their files that they ftp'd vanished after reboot.


> 3. etc....
Remember you are root and can write anywhere you like, but your users can't... tmp is free space for them.

Later,
Bill

[Stefan Farrelly]

1. If you dont cleanup /tmp regularly it WILL eventually fill up which will then cause you problems.

2. Sometimes people actually put stuff in /tmp which they want to keep for a while, hence HP dont automatically clean it out on reboot. Sun does!

3. At all the sites ive worked its almost always been the same - 1 weeks worth is enough, anything older delete. Just in case you dont reboot your server regularly setup a cron job to clean it out weekly.

[S.K. Chan]

Is a matter of preference and how your environment operates really. By NOT turning it ON by default it a way of saying .. "it's up to you"..
In our environment we have scheduled downtime for us "admins" to do system maintenance once a month and all our users know that files in /tmp will be wiped out upon reboot.
There are also other installation that regularly "housekeep" what's in /tmp by limiting it to say a week worth of files and typically this is done via cron. In this case "clean_tmps" is OFF.

[Mark Greene_1]

this is a bit of a reach, but if a process crashed and created a core file in /tmp and you then rebooted the system for whatever reason, if /tmp was cleared automatically, you'd not have the core file to diagnose the crash.

mark

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

Hi Yates


Oner more reason , if the processes use to write tmp files in /tmp direcorty and you dont clean it then the porcess may complain that the files alerady exist and hence fail . I would definatley clean /tmp at the startup

Manoj Srivastava

[Helen French]

My thoughts:

Why enable:
1) Freeing space in /tmp, which is defenitely an important file system to have free space on it.
2) To keep automatic deletion of temporary files; no man power required.

Why not default:
1) As in all other case, it's configuration choice given by HP. If you want do it; otherwise don't.

Why disable:
1) Accidental deletion of some files stored under /tmp. May be some logs/patch bundles/downloads/install files etc.
2) If sys admin can periodically check /tmp and delete unwanted files, then disable it.

I personally kept it disabled and do that stuff myself.

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

Yates,

Personally, I'd go for a cron job that cleans everything more than one week old out of /tmp. That way you're not dependant on having to re-boot in order to get it cleared out and you can control how often it gets cleaned and can fine tune the retention time period.

Semper Fi,
Pete

[hpuxrox]

Thanks all,

What other filesystems are good to keep clean other than /tmp.

[Pete Randall]

Yates,

I like to keep an eye on /var (I do a bdf and a du -sk /var/* and mail it to myself every day so I can see what's growing under /var). You can clean out /var/tmp much the same as /tmp. You need to keep an eye on all the log files that your applications create. My programmers are "supposed" to always put their logfiles in a particular directory that I clean with a find command via cron. There's probably more but that's pretty much my list.

Hope this helps,
Pete

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Because most UNIX boxes stay up for months, it's rather silly to have an rc script do this. As has been mentioned the better way is to have a cron job scan for files older than some given value and remove them. /tmp, /var/tmp are good candidates. It is also a good idea to have a daemon to remove old database archive logs.

As part of this same routine, you might want to also trim various log files.

[Ernesto Cappello]

Hi
I'm HP-UX 11.0 and in /etc/rc.config.d there is a file called clean_tmps and you must change the value of variable CLEAR_TMP=1.
This is my "clean_tmps" file.

#!/sbin/sh
# @(#) $Revision: 72.4 $
# List and/or clear temporary files
#
# LIST_TEMPS: Set to 1 to produce a listing of temporary files at startup.
#
# CLEAR_TMP: Set to 1 to remove all files from /tmp at startup.
#
LIST_TEMPS=1
CLEAR_TMP=1


Regards
Ernesto.

[Thierry Poels_1]

Hi,

I strongly agree "OLD" files need to be removed from /tmp and /var/tmp regularly.
The definition of "OLD" depends on your needs and disk space, it can be one day or several days.

But I advise against clearing /tmp on reboot:
- users know they put their files on a temporary location, but they won't accept that their files get removed 2 minutes later because of a system reboot (wanted or unwanted).
- after a system crash, you might loose important temporary files which indicate where jobs and/or applications aborted due to the crash.
- sysadmins (or contractors) also use /tmp to store temporary files or copies of files, they need AFTER a reboot. (I will never forget this one ;)

regards,
Thierry.

[hpuxrox]

What would be the correct find syntax to clear tmp of files over a week old?

[Pete Randall]

Yates,

Try:

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

Pete

[S.K. Chan]

This would work ..

# find /tmp -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm -f {} \;

test it first ..

# find /tmp -type f -mtime +7 -exec ll {} \; | more