Deleting files in /tmp

chichibabin · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 24 Jul 2004 Posts: 133

HI all,
I could do with freeing up some disk space and was wondering if it was safe to delete all files and subdirectories within the /tmp directory?
Cheers,
Sat

perseguidor · Posted: Sun Dec 12, 2004 3:39 pm Post subject:

In my experience, I'd say that is a big no-no. I'm talking about a past experience with rh9, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think some unix sockets reside there. You could end up with X not finding the font server (if you use one) or something like that.

How much space does it take as a whole? You probably can remove most files in it, and perhaps a few directories too, but I'd say not all.

Anything you recognize as a user file should be deletable.
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mhodak · Veteran Joined: 15 Nov 2003 Posts: 1218

Cleaning /tmp while your system is running will cause problems becasue of sockets (like perseguidor said). It should be safe to clean /tmp at the shutdown. Alternatively, you can use tools like sys-apps/tmpreaper (run it as a cron job), which will clean files in that have not been accessed for certain amount of time.