Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Dean S. Messing writes:
>
> I'm running F15. Files are mysteriously being removed from /tmp after a
> number of days of not being touched. I am familiar with
> /etc/cron.daily/tmpwatch and, in fact, modify it to inhibit removal of
> files from /tmp. In the past this has worked. Under F15 it has not.
>
> Two or three weeks ago I deleted it from /etc/cron.daily but older files
> _still_ get removed from /tmp. I've rebooted at least once. I'm not
> sure if it happens at bootup or while the system is running, but
> something is still removing files from /tmp.
>
> Does anyone know of another mechanism for this?
I would check for the low-hanging fruit. Exactly the nature of your
modifications to tmpwatch. Without knowing its history, its possible that
its options have changed, and your custom changes no longer do the same
thing they do before. Double-check the manpage. Especially since, I see,
/etc/cron.daily/tmpwatch is %config(noreplace), so if tmpwatch's options
have changed, and aren't backwards compatible, and updating the tmpwatch
package won't clobber the existing file, as a result the options you have in
there may no longer work.
Well, as I said in my OP, tmpwatch is no longer even involved. I
removed it from /etc/cron.daily. So unless it's ghost is still there,
I'm at loss to explain the behaviour. FYI, my mod to tmpwatch was
merely to comment out the lines:
#/usr/sbin/tmpwatch "$flags" -x /tmp/.X11-unix -x /tmp/.XIM-unix \
# -x /tmp/.font-unix -x /tmp/.ICE-unix -x /tmp/.Test-unix \
# -X '/tmp/hsperfdata_*' 10d /tmp
When files continued to disappear, I moved tmpwatch out of
/etc/cron.daily. Alas, they still do.
Or, perhaps, gathering some more data would point to the likely
culprit. If
the files in your tmp get deleted after a consistent period of time, that
would offer a clue.
They seem to disappear after about 14 days. But it might be slightly
more or less. Untouched files get removed. And directories containing
untouched files get cleaned out leaving an empty dir behind. This is just
But, sometimes, tilting at windmills is not very productive.
/tmp's never
meant to be used to archive anything. I wouldn't put anything in /tmp that
I'll want to make sure it'll still be there, tomorrow, even if nothing
supposed to get nuked from there for weeks. Might be easier to change one's
habits.
Something I've done for a decade w/o issues is hardly tilting at
windmills. Be that as it may, I have become extremely curious as to
what in F15 might be doing the deed.
I'd create a folder in my home, or in my Desktop directory, for
stuff that I
haven't yet decided where it needs to go, permanently.
Right now I'd simply like to understand why F15 (and I suppose F16)
behaves this way. F13 and prior certainly didn't. I never ran F14.
Dean