On Thu, 2008-07-17 at 10:11 +1000, Tony Sceats wrote: > > > > > > > > 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!
Now please excuse my ignorance, but that makes it sound as if Ubuntu's /var/run is actually held in RAM, and not on disk at all? My system is a clean install of Hardy server and the install didn't ask for a size for /var/run so it must have been automated. There is 4G of Ram, so if the memory is allocated as needed, then 2G makes some sense if /var/run is used for performance reasons. The problem only arises with apps like mondo that assume /var/run will be large. I haven't seen the problem before. I used mondo on Feisty and Sarge and the question never arose. Given that there is an option in mondoarchive to specify another path, should I report this as a bug? It kept me busy for several hours before the penny dropped as to why I was getting disk full errors. David. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
