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

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