Re: The /tmp and modules_install saga

Peter T. Breuer (ptb@it.uc3m.es)
Tue, 6 Oct 1998 17:46:13 +0200 (MET DST)


"A month of sundays ago Alan Cox wrote:"
>
>>small and deliberately so. /tmp is the right place to do this work. Just
>
>Unfortunately /tmp/ isnt usable in a vendor portable manner. I can submit
>Linus an elegant clean patch that uses /tmp and works on RH 5.0+/current SuSE
>and Debian and probably crashes and burns on Slackware. Thats far worse

I don't get it. What can the difference between /tmp be between RH and
slackware? Sticky flag? Size? Soft link? None of those make any
difference. It must be something else in the environment apart from
/tmp that you are needing. But what else apart from mktemp() do you
need?

> The workspace files in question are 2 or 3 text files under 4K long.

OK .. but they are being put in a non-variable part of the FS. It
should not be used for temporary storage. /lib'd be mounted ro on my
systems if it weren't for the fact that it's on the same partition as
/etc, and /etc needs a variable mtab. /usr and /usr/local are mounted
readonly. /tmp and /usr/tmp point to /var/tmp.

You cannot discount a fix because it won't work on some distributions.
Linux is not limited to distribution setups in the first place, and in
the second place those distributions will _rapidly_ change their setup
if it is required in order to support kernel builds (and thirdly I don't
believe you :-). You are free to make your decision based on aesthetics,
standards, and security.

> Alan

Peter

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/