Re: Can/should I delete /tmp partition?
On 8/10/25 14:13, Nicolas George wrote:
David Christensen (HE12025-08-10):
From a risk/ reward standpoint, the risk is that you will trash you system
while attempting to rearrange partitions and swap. The reward is that your
swap space will grow from ~1 GB to ~3 GB.
Or just turn the existing partition into swap without rearranging
anything, the risk is minimal.
I saw and considered that solution. Converting nvme0n1p5 into another
swap partition is lower complexity and risk than attempting to merge
nvme0n1p4 and nvme0n1p5 into one swap partition and dealing with the
consequences (such as what happens to nvme0n1p6).
But, if you're going to do partition surgery, one swap partition is KISS.
That said, I still think ignoring nvme0n1p5 and adding memory is the
best answer.
Is your system now using swap (after upgrading Debian)?
/tmp now being a tmpfs will put more stress on the memory.
The point is turning /tmp to tmpfs and its former partition to swap puts
the stress on memory exactly at the same point as it was before, with
the added benefit that tmpfs is more efficient since it does not try to
survive an outage.
Turning /tmp to tmpfs and adding nvme0n1p5 to swap is not the same as
using nvme0n1p5 for /tmp. Most notably, 8 MiB is already small for a
Debian graphical daily driver. Reducing memory further under /tmp
loading sounds like a bad idea -- whatever is filling /tmp is probably
also eating memory.
If the answer to both of the above is "yes", then your best solution is to
add memory. Do that and ignore nvme0n1p5.
If the answer to both of the above is "yes" and your computer memory is
maxed out, then it is time for a new computer with more memory. Again,
ignore nvme0n1p5.
Oh, great, the “throw money at it” attitude.
I suppose if Default's children have to go without bread to let buy more
memory, they should just eat cake instead?
US$17 for a DDR3 2 @ 4 GiB memory kit is not unreasonable.
The last time I refused to "throw money at it", I lost data. But, I
needed a ~US$150 hard drive.
David
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