Bug#617299: dpkg-deb: should give a hint when it fails due to filling /tmp

[Martin-Éric Racine <martin-eric.racine@iki.fi>]

2012/7/13 Martin-Éric Racine <martin-eric.racine@iki.fi>:
> Package: dpkg
> Version: 1.16.4.3
> Followup-For: Bug #617299
>
> I also encounter the same bug when trying to build kernel 3.2.21 from upstream tarball:
>
> $ LOCALVERSION=-git-686-pae make deb-pkg
> [...]
> dpkg-deb: building package `firmware-linux' in `../firmware-linux_3.2.21-git-686-pae-1_i386.deb'.
> dpkg-deb: building package `linux-headers-3.2.21-git-686-pae' in `../linux-headers-3.2.21-git-686-pae_3.2.21-git-686-pae-1_i386.deb'.
> dpkg-deb: building package `linux-libc-dev' in `../linux-libc-dev_3.2.21-git-686-pae-1_i386.deb'.
> dpkg-deb: building package `linux-image-3.2.21-git-686-pae' in `../linux-image-3.2.21-git-686-pae_3.2.21-git-686-pae-1_i386.deb'.
> dpkg-deb (subprocess): data member: internal gzip write error: 'File not found'
> dpkg-deb: error: subprocess <compress> from tar -cf returned error exit status 2
> make[1]: *** [deb-pkg] Error 2
> make: *** [deb-pkg] Error 2

This seems to be caused by either 'tar' or 'gzip' using /tmp to build
the package. Since recent Debian systems default to using tmpfs for
/tmp, systems with insufficient memory or with another process using
all available memory resources will make the build fail. Would there
perhaps be a way to make this process use /var/tmp or some other
normal storage space to avoid these nonsensical failures?