Stefan Sperling <s...@stsp.name> wrote: > > A smaller secondary concern is if you can convince software using this > > space, > > from remote, to hog the space too much, and/or lose track of files in there. > > Which would also create the fallout problems of "/var is full". > > > > It's a matter of how other /var-using software misbehaves or fails in > > those circumstances. These concerns have been ignored too long. > > Yes, absolutely correct. Logs or tempfiles filling up /var are a problem, > and in the gotweb application Tracey and I created it is indeed possible > for requests to trigger large tempfiles. We need to look at that and come > up with a better solution. > We could check whether httpd/slowcgi could help with this somehow and try > to come up with something that works for any application and not just ours.
I'm worried anyone using a tmp directory is going to write software which "loses files" when it crashes. That's yet another reason why a filesystem can get full. And when /var gets full, there are big consequences. We've done pretty much NOTHING to the other /var consuming-software to make sure they work (or fail kindly) when /var is full. It is an ignored problem. It only takes a little experiment to know the problem is real.