Max size of /tmp folder

[smolloy]

This morning I was unable to log into KDE as it was reporting that the /tmp folder was full, so, to get things working, I logged into a text console and moved the contents of /tmp to a different drive. After this I was able to start KDE again.

The weird thing is that the total space used by the files I moved is 237 MB, and this is on a (mostly empty) 500 GB disc! It seems like there is some other limit to the size of /tmp. Can anyone tell me if there is such a limit, and, also, what would cause my /tmp folder to become so big?

I should mention that this is the first time I've had this problem, after operating this computer quite smoothly for several months now.

[anomie]

The weird thing is that the total space used by the files I moved is 237 MB, and this is on a (mostly empty) 500 GB disc!

How are your filesystems laid out? Try df -h

[smolloy]

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/system-root
                       50G  7.6G   43G  16% /
udev                 1006M  180K 1006M   1% /dev
/dev/sda2             4.1G   55M  4.0G   2% /boot
/dev/mapper/system-home
                      410G   44G  367G  11% /home

Looks like there's a ton of room to me!

It really seems like there's some sort of artificial limit placed on the size of /tmp. My theory is that something went wrong with my nightly cron job to backup my machine, and a load of files were left in the tmp folder. Since the backup (based on dar) had died in the middle, the OS didn't know what to do with the tmp files, and just left them there. When I next tried to log on to KDE I wasn't able to as /tmp was as full as the OS would allow it to be.

Does this sound like a reasonable theory? Does anyone know of any limits on the size of /tmp?

[devils casper]

i think you are right. this is the output of 'df -h' in my machine.

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda9 12G 3.2G 8.1G 28% /
varrun 237M 60K 237M 1% /var/run
varlock 237M 4.0K 237M 1% /var/lock
udev 237M 124K 237M 1% /dev
devshm 237M 0 237M 0% /dev/shm
lrm 237M 19M 218M 8% /lib/modules/2.6.15-27-386/volatile
/dev/hda1 10G 5.9G 4.2G 59% /media/hda1
/dev/hda5 15G 7.3G 7.8G 49% /media/hda5
/dev/hda6 10G 4.0G 6.1G 40% /media/hda6
/dev/hda7 12G 4.6G 6.7G 41% /media/hda7

varrun, varlock, udev, devshm and lrm has 237MB max size limit. your machine kept some files in /tmp coz of malfunction of dar and /tmp space was filled up.





casper

[smolloy]

Thanks casper.