[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#665406: poorly chosen tmpfs defaults encorages debian developers to not use /tmp as the FHS intends

[Roger Leigh]

I have done a significant reworking of the handling of tmpfs
on /tmp.  Please have a look at the packages here:

http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/sysvinit/

I would be very grateful for any feedback regarding these
changes.  While these don't disable tmpfs on /tmp by default,
they do increase the default limits.  Further increases are
possible.

The full list of changes is here:
http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/sysvinit/sysvinit_2.88dsf-23_amd64.changes

Summary:
- All tmpfs settings moved to /etc/default/tmpfs; it is of course
  possible to continue to use /etc/fstab to override them.
  /etc/default/rcS is no longer used.
- overflowtmp handling, which was unobvious and inflexible, has
  been merged with the RAMTMP handling, and the limit for its
  use is settable, and it is documented in tmpfs(5).
- one can configure the tmpfs size as a percentage of the VM size
  (including swap) rather than of the RAM size.  Just use %VM in
  place of %.  /tmp and /run/shm default to 20%VM rather than
  20% [RAM].  This should lead to a large increase if you have
  a decent amount of swap available.  Note: %VM does not work in
  fstab, though patching the kernel to do this looks easy enough.
- if you have a small amount of RAM, tmpfs on /tmp is automatically
  disabled (modulo read only root and overflow conditions).
  Currently set at 64 MiB, but can be changed.
- if you have a separate mount for /tmp in /etc/fstab (non-tmpfs),
  there won't be a separate hidden tmpfs mount.
- improved cleanup of masked temporary files at boot.


So, what kind of feedback is needed?  After installing the updated
packages linked to above, I'd like to know if you're still running
into issues with lack of space on /tmp, and (whether or not you
have problems):

- the size and free space on the root filesystem (df /)
- the amount of system memory (cat /proc/meminfo | grep MemTotal)
- the amount of swap (cat /proc/meminfo | grep SwapTotal)
- the size of the tmpfs on /tmp (mount | grep /tmp)
- the amount of free space on /tmp (df /tmp)
- which applications and/or shell commands you were using which caused
  you to run out of space.  The size of the files created would be
  useful to know. (ls -l /tmp and du -sm /tmp/*)


Regards,
Roger

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