Setting up an env variable

[Ronald Cogen]

Hello out there!,

One of our developers uses the sort() system call rather extensively, which constantly writes stuff to /var/tmp. As /var/tmp is not very large it proposes a problem. I would like to set up a global variable which would redirect the path somewhere else. Where should I begin?

Thanks,
Ron

[Jean-Louis Phelix · Accepted solution]

Hi,

$TMPDIR is used by sort.

Regards,

Jean-Louis.

[T G Manikandan]

you can frequently clean /var/tmp.
you can schedule a cron job

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

[Ronald Cogen]

Hello Jean Louis,

Where should I redefine $TMPDIR?

Regards,
Ron

[Ken Hubnik_2]

You can have the developers set their tmp to a different space by modifying their .profile or .kshrc. Also their is an option on the sort command sort -T directoryname. This will allow them to pick the temporary sort location. Do a man on sort and check out the -T option.

[Jean-Louis Phelix]

Hi,

You could define it either in your /etc/profile or directly in the program which calls sort (export TMPDIR=/xxx in shell, putenv("TMPDIR=/xxx") in C).

Regards,

Jean-Louis.

[Hamdy Al-Sebaey]

Hi,
You can make a link to a big file system every thing which is comming to /var/tmp will go to the new FS.
Another method is to enlarge /var & to clean files which are older than a couple of days.
#/usr/bin/touch /var/tmp; /usr/bin/find /var/tmp -mtime +7 -exec -rm -rf {} \;

You can set this command at your crontab.

Regards,
Hamdy

[Darrell Allen]

Hi Ron,

My first choice is to add space to /var.

Perhaps a workaround is to link /var/tmp to a directory in a filesystem with plenty of space. Still, since the OS expects /var/tmp to be used for sort (and other processes), it's best to give space where it is really needed.

You could also create /var/tmp as a separate filesystem with the space it needs.

Does the application clean up after itself? If not, I'd have a discussion with the developer.

Darrell