clearing out /tmp safely

[Tom 'Needs A Hat' Mitchell]

On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 07:48:19PM -0600, Robert wrote:
> >>
> >>[root at mavis root]# /usr/sbin/tmpwatch 240 /tmp
> >>
> >>and I *still* have a bunch of old files in /tmp
> >>
> >>[root at mavis root]# find /tmp -ctime +10 | wc -l
> >>    613
....
> Y'know, I bet this is gonna turn out to be something really simple that 
> I'm overlooking -- something in the same league as the infamous 
> logrotate problem a few years ago that caused the supply of inodes to 
> dry up in short order.
> 

Try "stat" on these files and dirs there are four interesting dates
when thinking about files.

  Creation: Access: Modify: Change:

I believe that "tmpwatch" is paying attention to the access time
stamp.  So if you inspect a file you are accessing it (cat, wc,
virus-scanner...) and the access time will be reset.

Is that what is going on?

An tmpwatch interaction with the 'access' time and dirs  makes sense 
because of the checking for contents thus:
  mkdir /tmp/AAA
  stat  /tmp/AAA
  sleep 60
  stat  /tmp/AAA
  ls    /tmp/AAA
  stat  /tmp/AAA


  
-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
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