> > > > Ah, now this all depends. If /var/run was a normal disk filesystem > under Ubuntu you would be correct. It isn't, though: > > ] mount | grep /var/run > varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=0755) > > Note 'type tmpfs' there? tmpfs is a swap backed ramdisk, essentially, > and like /var/lock is put there by Ubuntu to ensure that these > directories are cleaned at reboot without having to fuss about deleting > files or read-only filesystems.
hey, that's pretty cool, can't say I'm familiar with tmpfs - does it pre-allocate the space or grow to the specified size as it needs to? I ask because clearly 2Gb is an enormous amount of RAM/SWAP to spend on /var/run just so you don't have to clean it at boot time (which can be done trivially) > imho, 2Gb is either way too big or too small depending on what the computer > does.. try 'du -hs /var/run/*' to see what else is happening there - for me > it's usually less than 1Mb, but sometimes spools (eg, mail spools) will be > put there which will increase it a lot, The mail spool lives under /var, but not under /var/run. The FHS, in > fact, carefully defines the purpose of /var/run -- and that does not > include being scratch space for large processes. FHS aside (because I know you're right about it), I know I've seen spools there, there used to pretty much always be a /var/run/spool directory, and I know this has caused me problems, many moons ago now though, that's for sure, probably on RH6 or Debian Potato Y'all should file a bug report indicating that Mondo should use /tmp or > /var/tmp to build big scratch files. Indeed, this would be very annoying, space aside - I'm not actually familiar with this app, but given the in-built inpermanence of /var/run, this seems like a very quick way to lose hours of hard work! -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
