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Debian packages relying on TMPDIR



Hi all,

I'm not sure if this has previously been discussed on
debian-devel but I haven't found anything.  I have
encountered some packages which when started as root and
drop privileges rely on the TMPDIR environment variable. 
That is $TMPDIR must be writable.  This is a problem here
as I'm sure it is on other systems.  I have my $TMPDIR set
to /root/.tmp for security and that directory is mode 0700. 
If I upgraded MySQL for example and dpkg restarts it, it
inharits my secure TMPDIR but MySQL drops root privilege
and cannot write to it.

I am wondering if it is my responsibility as a user to
clear TMPDIR on a dist-upgrade, the init.d script to clear
it or the upstream program to check to see if it's writable
and use /tmp if not.

Regards,
Shane

-- 
Shane Wegner: shane@cm.nu
              http://www.cm.nu/~shane/
PGP:          1024D/FFE3035D
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              5B5C 4F89 9A4E FFE3 035D



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