Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 13:25:34 -0400 (EDT) From: Thomas David Rivers <ponds!rivers@dg-rtp.dg.com> To: ponds!zibbi.mikom.csir.co.za!jhay, ponds!time.cdrom.com!jkh Cc: ponds!hub.freebsd.org!freebsd-bugs, ponds!uriah.heep.sax.de!j Subject: Re: conf/3605: New /etc/rc not clearing /tmp Message-ID: <199705191725.NAA23220@lakes.water.net>
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>
> > Semi on the same topic. What about making daily read rc.conf or something
> > and then make the regular cleaning of /tmp configurable. That way daily
> > also needn't be edited locally.
>
> That's an interesting idea - I assume we'd do the same for weekly and
> monthly? Any objections?
>
> Jordan
>
Generally, it's not a good idea to clean /tmp while a machine is
"up".
Consider the scenario:
1) long-running-process writes a file to /tmp, to be read some time later.
(closes the file, but "remembers" it's there.)
2) /etc/daily comes along, wipes out the file.
3) long-running-process goes back to read file. Oops - it's gone
missing.
Of course, the definition of long-running-process just has to be a little
more than the time to close and unlink a file; reopening it later.
Where I work, we've had to hack many vendor's equivalent of /etc/daily
to not clean out /tmp.
Now, if you make it configurable - I'd say the default configuration
is never...
- Dave Rivers -
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