/var/tmp

[Nobody's Hero]

OK, I hate to do this ,but I have no choice. Plus I've spent so many points here that I feel like I am entitled. But delete this post if you want, I am ashamed.

I am an HP person, have been for years.
Now I am in an HP/Solaris shop.

Hp has a switch to set to clear /var/tmp at reboot.

Does solaris have one? a switch to set to make it clear at reboot? and if there are any Sun people out here, is it a good idea to do so?

Sorry, I couldnt find any answers on sun sites. I think I hit the end of the internet while searching.

10x
RPM

[john kingsley · Accepted solution]

Look in the file /etc/init.d/RMTMPFILES

In this file there is a note:

# Traditional SunOS 4.x behavior has been to not alter the contents of
# /var/tmp (/usr/tmp) at boot time. This behavior is maintained as the
# current default behavior. It the traditional System V behavior of
# removing everything in /var/tmp is desired, remove the following 'exit'.

exit


If you comment this exit line it should work.

There should also be a hard link between
/etc/init.d/RMTMPFILES &
/etc/rc2.d/S05RMTMPFILES

[A. Clay Stephenson]

It really doesn't matter because whatever "built-in" mechanisms exist to delete temporary files, you still have to look at the rc scripts to see if custom versions are in use. While clearing temporary files from /tmp, /usr/tmp, and/or /var/tmp used to a common rc practice, boxes are rebooted so infrequently nowadays that these rc scripts are all but worthless. It is much more common to rely upon cron scripts to do cleanup these days.

[Darrel Louis]

Hi,

I've checked on Solaris 5.9 and found the following two scripts dealing with /var/tmp:
PRESERVE
RMTMPFILES

But on Solaris 5.10 I don't have it, so it could be that Sun has another mechanism for this, which I can't find at the moment.

Darrel

[Geoff Wild]

Talking with a Sun Guru on my team and he says there is no builtin mechanism to delete files from /var/tmp on Solaris.

On Solaris, /var/tmp is used by applications, things like vi sessions.

DO NOT make it a symbolic link to /tmp - as that is a memory mapped file system and programs like vi expect to see a physical file systems.

Best to write your own rc script to rm files leftover in /var/tmp

Rgds...Geoff