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Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 17:09:52 -0500 (CDT)
From: Tony Kimball <alk@think.com>
Message-Id: <199608292209.RAA05296@compound.Think.COM>
To: ig25@mvmampc66.ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Tired of /tmp? Here's a proposed solution
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Quoth Thomas Koenig on Wed, 28 August:
: Guido M. Witmond wrote:
: 
: >Well, this is a good quick hack. What about removing the CONCEPT of
: >public writable filesystems like /tmp.
: 
: Agree 100%.
: 
: The best solution would be, IMHO, to give each user his or her
: personal temporary directory, under /tmp/username, mode 700.
: /tmp can stay 1777 for stuff like make files accessible to other
: users.
: 
: Comments?

Yup.  Don't do it.  Allow instead the creation of files with no
path, which disappear when closed -- hey, better yet, use free memory,
and back them by swap.  Hmmm -- sounds suspiciously like unto 
mmap(...,open("/dev/null",...),...).

I think the rub is expunging the use of /tmp from all the
applications.  (Many of these uses are in the form of mktemp(3)
calls, and several others are fifos.)  Once in, it is hard
to expunge such a pervasive kludge...