Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 8 Oct 2002 08:54:51 +0100
From:      Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk>
To:        Christopher Smith <csmith@its.uq.edu.au>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Use MFS for /tmp, etc ?
Message-ID:  <20021008075451.GA10638@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi>
In-Reply-To: <B9C881F1.30CDD%csmith@its.uq.edu.au>
References:  <B9C881F1.30CDD%csmith@its.uq.edu.au>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 12:37:05PM +1000, Christopher Smith wrote:
> What's the consensus for using an MFS filesystem for places like /tmp.
> /var/tmp, /var/run, etc ?  I see in some oldish postings to -questions this
> is considered a bad idea, does this still apply in more recent versions of
> FreeBSD (4.6.2) ?

Using mfs for /tmp works very well.  I wouldn't use it for /var/tmp or
/var/run though -- files in /var/tmp are meant to persist across
reboots. /var/run is far too small to bother mounting as a separate
partition, and having it as a mfs won't give you any apreciable
perfomance advantage.

If you do use mfs on your /tmp partition, there are a few gotchas:

   i) *Always* use the '-s nnnnnn' mount option to limit how much
      memory the mfs will use up.  Otherwise, there's a very easy
      denial of service attack that can use up all your memory+swap
      The argument to -s is given in sectors: that's multiples of 512
      bytes by default.

  ii) Don't mount /tmp noexec and expect to be able to do a 'make
      buildworld' or to be able to build a number of ports.  The
      'nosuid', 'nodev' and 'nosymfollow' options are useful security
      enhancements though.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
                                                      Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20021008075451.GA10638>