files recovery after rm?

[Margaret Mikulska]

In article <20551 at unix.cis.pitt.edu> yahoo at unix.cis.pitt.edu (Kenneth L Moore) writes:
>In article cpcahil at virtech.uucp (Conor P. Cahill) writes:
>
>==>In article, yahoo at unix.cis.pitt.edu (Kenneth L Moore) writes:
>
>==>Also, since /tmp is frequently used by lots of programs, leaving files in
>==>those directories for a long period of time will result in the size of the 
>==>directory growing and can have a significant 
>==>performance impact on the entire system.

The main impact is not that much performance, but 'file system full' and
'no space on device', especially when /tmp is not on a separate disk
partition. You can overwrite some interesting files this way. Some UNIX 
boxes simply crash when that happens.

>This should be addressed by the systems people. I would think that a
>program to clean /tmp on an as needed basis would be appropriate. How
>about that systems type guys. What's the poop on /tmp? Is it
>automatically cleaned?
>
>I have logged in a week after writing to /tmp and found files still
>there.

'The systems people' addressed that already. /tmp gets cleaned during 
booting. Otherwise, it depends what the sys. adm. puts in 
/usr/lib/crontab (or /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root in SunOS) - it's 
fairly common, but not standard, to put an entry there to clean /tmp.  
No special program is necessary (that would be an overkill); just a 
short line. See "man cron" or "man crontab".

Margaret Mikulska

mem at inls1.ucsd.edu
ucsd!inls1!mem