The main point of this discussion has been that deleting the tempdir() a fixed number of days after its creation is a problem. It should be deleted when the process that created it is done. R attempts to do this, but there are cases in which it does not so a backup is needed.
Bill Dunlap TIBCO Software wdunlap tibco.com On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 8:46 AM, Brian G. Peterson <br...@braverock.com> wrote: > Bill, > > It seems that tmpreaper, tmpwatch, or systemd-tmpfiles should be able > to handle this for you. > > set the atime to some number of days rather than a short duration. > > I think I set mine to three days, and I can';t recall ever having a > problem that was more than a minor annoyance (help breaking) on old R > processes. > > Cheers, > > Brian > > -- > Brian G. Peterson > http://braverock.com/brian/ > Ph: 773-459-4973 > IM: bgpbraverock > > On Wed, 2017-04-26 at 08:25 -0700, William Dunlap via R-devel wrote: > > The Ubuntu machine I use a lot (along with others) must not be > > cleaning > > /tmp as it has a fair number of Rtmp* directories in /tmp, even when > > there > > are no R sessions running on the machine. I would like to automate > > their > > removal but there is no obvious way to see if the R process that > > created > > the tempdir is still around. If there were a way to associate R > > tempdir's > > with R processes then one could make an R-specific tool to get rid of > > the > > unused tempdirs. > > > > > > Bill Dunlap > > TIBCO Software > > wdunlap tibco.com > > > > On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 8:09 AM, Martin Maechler <maech...@stat.math. > > ethz.ch > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > Dirk Eddelbuettel <e...@debian.org> > > > > > > > > on Wed, 26 Apr 2017 08:40:38 -0500 writes: > > > > > > > On 26 April 2017 at 08:29, Duncan Murdoch wrote: > > > > | This seems like the wrong approach. The problem occurs as > > > soon as > > > the > > > > | tempdir() gets cleaned up: there could be information in > > > temp > > > files > > > > | that gets lost at that point. So the solution should be to > > > prevent the > > > > | cleanup, not to continue on after it has occurred (as > > > "check = > > > TRUE" > > > > | does). This follows the principle that it's better for the > > > process to > > > > | always die than to sometimes silently produce incorrect > > > results. > > > > > > > That is generally true, but also "hard" as we don't have a > > > handle on > > > the OS > > > . > > > > > > Indeed... > > > and that was the reason I've proposed the simple platform > > > agnostic tool which does not entirely solve the problem (in this > > > sense I > > > agree with "wrong approach") but allows to mitigate it and (by > > > followup changes) to work around many use case problems. > > > > > > > | Frederick posted the way to do this in systems using > > > systemd. We > > > should > > > > > > > While that was a very helpful post yet it may only apply to > > > Arch > > > Linux as > > > > stated. My Ubuntu systems at home and work all run systemd > > > too, but > > > do _not_ > > > > automatically remove tempfiles. > > > > > > > Yet what he suggested is quite right: we should define a > > > proper > > > config file > > > > for this facility and then possibly also use the /run > > > directory as > > > many other > > > > services now and (of course) also either TEMPDIR or later the > > > code > > > to have > > > > /run be another fallback if TMP, TEMP, TMPDIR, ... are unset. > > > > > > > Distribution maintainers such as yours truly could then > > > include this > > > > configuration. > > > > > > > | be putting that in place, or the equivalent on systems > > > using other > > > > | tempfile cleanups. This looks to me like something that > > > "make > > > install" > > > > | should do, or perhaps it should be done by people putting > > > together > > > > | packages for specific systems. > > > > > > > Doesn't 'make install' only write to $RHOME/ and below, plus > > > $PREFIX/bin ? > > > > > > Also, 'make install' is optional for good reasons. > > > E.g., I never ever run 'make install': I typically always have many > > > R > > > versions, all available in the shell and ESS (Emacs Speaks > > > Statistics) via symbolic links into a directory on PATH. > > > > > > Dirk mentioned (as well) that this is all very platform specific > > > which I do think is important. From my typical OS point of view: > > > Why should the user who runs R not have the right to delete the > > > tempdir which was created by the process that she runs and hence > > > owns ? > > > > > > I agree it would be an improvement if we made such deletion much > > > harder than it is now, and yes, there may be great (almost) > > > cross-platform tools available to manage this much better than > > > we do now, e.g., via open files. > > > > > > Before we are there, I would find it useful to have a new > > > 'tempdir' (i.e. folder/directory for R's temporary files) to be > > > re-created manually or automagically in those cases it has > > > disappeared, and that is within easy reach via the proposed > > > tempdir() functionality. > > > > > > OTOH, I typically live very well by quickly killing > > > and restarting R (from inside ESS). > > > > > > The OP issue was to help newbies and computer-non-experts, the > > > latter nowadays comprising more than 90% of R users (I'd guess ~ > > > 98% looking at our otherwise smart students). > > > > > > These are typically "slightly" confused when they ask for help and > > > get a pretty severe error message: > > > > > > > ?lm > > > Error in file(out, "wt") : cannot open the connection > > > In addition: Warning message: > > > In file(out, "wt") : > > > cannot open file '/tmp/RtmpztK6f7/Rtxt36972b91938': No such > > > file or > > > directory > > > > > > > > > Martin > > > > > > ______________________________________________ > > > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > > > > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > > > ______________________________________________ > > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
