Re: Make /tmp/ a tmpfs and cleanup /var/tmp/ on a timer by default [was: Re: systemd: tmpfiles.d not cleaning /var/tmp by default]
> On 7 May 2024, at 18:57, Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:
>
> Hakan Bayındır <hakan@bayindir.org> writes:
>> Dear Russ,
>
>>> If you are running a long-running task that produces data that you
>>> care about, make a directory for it to use, whether in your home
>>> directory, /opt, /srv, whatever.
>
>> Sorry but, clusters, batch systems and other automated systems doesn't
>> work that way.
>
> Yours might not, but I spent 20 years maintaining clusters and batch
> systems and I assure you that's how mine worked.
>
That’s nice. We’re in it for the same duration.
>> That's not an extension of the home directory in any way. After users
>> submit their jobs to the cluster, they neither have access to the
>> execution node, nor they can pick and choose where to put their files.
>
>> These files may stay there up to a couple of weeks, and deleting
>> everything periodically will probably corrupt the jobs of these users
>> somehow.
>
> Using /var/tmp for this purpose is not a good design decision.
> Directories are free; they can make a new one and point the files of batch
> jobs there. They don't have to overload a directory that historically has
> different semantics and is often periodically cleared. I get that this
> may not be your design or something you have control over, so telling you
> this doesn't directly help, but the point still stands.
>
> Again, obviously the people configuring that cluster can configure it
> however they want, including overriding the /var/tmp cleanup policy. But
> they're playing with fire by training users to use /var/tmp, and it's
> going to result in someone getting their data deleted at some point,
> regardless of what Debian does.
>
You still assume that we direct users' home directories to /var/tmp or /tmp. This is not true, users work on their own home folders, on a different storage system. Possibly I didn’t myself clear enough.
The applications users use create these temporary files without users' knowledge. They work in their own directories, but applications create another job dependent state files in both /tmp and /var/tmp. These are different programs and I assure you they’re not created there because user (or we) configured something. These files live there during the lifetime of the job, and cleaned afterwards by the application.
> --
> Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
>
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