| 1 |
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- |
| 2 |
Hash: SHA256 |
| 3 |
|
| 4 |
On 17/12/14 08:32, Mike Edenfield wrote: |
| 5 |
>>>> "A general use scratch pad area where files written are not |
| 6 |
>>>> expected to survive successive invocations of the program |
| 7 |
>>>> that wrote them". That's interesting as it means the sysadmin |
| 8 |
>>>> can delete everything in /tmp at any time for any reason, |
| 9 |
>> |
| 10 |
>> And as long as the app doesn't close the file descriptor, |
| 11 |
>> everything will continue to work just fine. I used to do this for |
| 12 |
>> fun about once a week or so on a many multiuser host, then tell |
| 13 |
>> users to tell upstream to fix the stupid bugs in any apps that |
| 14 |
>> broke. I've calmed down since then, must have something to do |
| 15 |
>> with the onset of senility... |
| 16 |
> |
| 17 |
> Then I discovered that ssh-agent decided that a good default place |
| 18 |
> to put its domain socket was /tmp/ssh-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and |
| 19 |
> deleting it breaks ssh key forwarding, among other things :\ |
| 20 |
|
| 21 |
I think a key point has been missed here, and that is use of the words |
| 22 |
"successive invocation". |
| 23 |
|
| 24 |
To me, /tmp is an area where files that are /not meant to be |
| 25 |
permanent/ are able to be written without contaminating the file |
| 26 |
system and without requiring open permissions in other more sensitive |
| 27 |
areas like /usr/share or /etc/randomdir. |
| 28 |
|
| 29 |
A single invocation of a program having its /tmp contents removed and |
| 30 |
then acting abnormally isn't something that I would consider a bug. |
| 31 |
It's when a _subsequent_ run fails because it's expecting a file that |
| 32 |
is, at least by it's location, _temporary_. |
| 33 |
|
| 34 |
One analogy may be that in driving a car, you expect that the engine |
| 35 |
is running, but it is only required whilst the car is being driven |
| 36 |
(therefore temporary - only required for that specific invocation). If |
| 37 |
you suddenly stop the engine when you're halfway to where you're |
| 38 |
going, within that invocation, you're going to have a bad time. |
| 39 |
|
| 40 |
If a program is expecting a dynamically generated file that isn't in |
| 41 |
the "normal" file system hierarchy, then that file should probably be |
| 42 |
stored in somewhere like /var or /usr, rather than /tmp. |
| 43 |
|
| 44 |
Well, that's my loose change worth. Also, it's early for me - please |
| 45 |
excuse any bad analogies. :-) |
| 46 |
|
| 47 |
- -- |
| 48 |
wraeth <wraeth@×××××××××.au> |
| 49 |
GnuPG Key: B2D9F759 |
| 50 |
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- |
| 51 |
Version: GnuPG v2 |
| 52 |
|
| 53 |
iF4EAREIAAYFAlSQr1YACgkQXcRKerLZ91kh2AD9HrxjihW5NqY673Af+GRCq6Bj |
| 54 |
kKsyiBUMJAVTkz96fJoA/2P6y3U5drh5Yma5uFRfK+l1YOdrsKj5LPVHBIa7Egpx |
| 55 |
=HmpB |
| 56 |
-----END PGP SIGNATURE----- |
Archives