[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#665995: installer: RAMTMP=no doesn't work still get /tmp as ramfs

[Paul E Condon]

On 20120328_103231, Roger Leigh wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 11:10:42AM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote:
> > On a wheezy machine 
> > changing /etc/default/rcS from RANTMP=yes to RAMTMP=no and rebooting 
> > still gives /tmp as a ramfs. The wheezy host is i686 pentium. Wheezy was 
> > installed. not upgraded. I don't have email properly installed so this 
> > report is from one of my squeeze hosts.
> 
> Is there an entry for /tmp in /etc/fstab?  Setting RAMTMP=no won't
> affect mounts in /etc/fstab?

I gather from your first question that having /tmp be a mountpoint
with a physical storage device mounted on it is required. This has
not been the case before wheezy, I think.

I want to use a portion of the root file system for scratch files
required by coreutils sort. The use of the variable TMPDIR as
suggested by the sort man page also no longer works, unless, of course
TMPDIR points to an active mountpoint, which, I believe, has never
been a requirement before wheezy.

I notice that the root file system on wheezy is making use of a kernel
feature called rootfs. I do not understand rootfs, but I wonder if
this use of rootfs may contribute to my problem. 

If this is not a bug, as I had thought, but intended behavior change,
then I need extra hardware to migrate to wheezy. Or can you suggest
a different way to get scratch space for sorting large files?

Regards, 
Paul

-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon at mesanetworks.net