UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I know that /tmp is used for memory or swap??? and that it should not be full ??? and that files under /tmp are automatically removed after a reboot???


Is this info true???

thx

It depends on the OS. Some clear it out and others do not. Others have /tmp the same as swap and others don't. Which OS are you asking about?

Carl

solaris 10

Usually, under Solaris, the /tmp is a swap filesystem, which means that it will be cleared after every reboot. So all files in /tmp will be lost after a reboot.

thx.
Why is it a common practice to create hidden files and directories under /tmp??

Unless we are going to prohibit the use of temporary files, we needed some place that programs can use for temporary files. You can't just create a file anywhere, there may not be enough space and/or the directory permissions may prohibit it. To create a file in say, /a/b/c/something, you must have read and search permission on /a, /a/b, and /a/b/c. Some time is required to check all of that, so for overall speed, a place of the form simply /something (that is, some top level directory) is better. Now we need a name for "something" and the ancient ones went with /tmp. Memory was very tight in the 60's and 70's and this argued for short names. /tmp is as short as you can get while still being somewhat obvious in intent.

Hi, I had a question which is somewhat related to /tmp so I thought I would put it here, instead of starting a new topic

does anyone know whether the uniq command make use of the /tmp directory ??

I know that the sort command does.

What about the uniq cmd ? I am using uniq in my C program and want to make sure that it does not cause an error if the /tmp folder is full..

Thanks in advance for your reply