Scratch partition...

Carlos O'Donell Jr. carlos at baldric.uwo.ca
Sun Dec 9 11:44:31 PST 2001


> 
> > > 
> > > Ok, but in my case, must i create this partition in the linux instalation?
> > 
> > nope...
> 
> Unless you want it to survive a reinstall.  That is, you can create a
> scratch directory inside your basic root partition and give it the
> permissions of /tmp (we often call scratch /xtmp, for example).
> However, /xtmp will then get recreated if you do a full reinstall of /,
> and any data stored there will be lost.
>

I don't even care about that data surviving during a 'reboot' :)
and as such I'm using tempfs (you can use something else) to create
a ramdrive for /tmp or /xtmp.

mount -t tmpfs /dev/shm /tmp

And in theory, the numbers I've seen tend to show that this is a bit
faster than having /tmp in the vfs cache path. Though I'm not an 
expert on the topic. However, I have noticed that on our compile box
(since gcc tends to toss it's temp .o files in /tmp) it's a bit lighter
on the drive.

What is the general idea about /tmp?
Are there any hard rules?


Cheers,
Carlos O'Donell Jr.
-----------------------------
University of Western Ontario
http://www.baldric.uwo.ca
-----------------------------



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