Robert Elz wrote:
> If there are to be any defaults at all, some kinds of assumptions need
> to be made - the ideal is not to just change things to suit the needs of
> any odd user - but to look at the common case.

I have very small var and separately mounted moderately big /tmp.
Because all tools which don't specifically don't need to save
temporary files accross reboots use it. updatedb should not be
different.

Hell, I really don't like some random tool (say updatedb) fill /var.
Usage of /var/tmp should be minimized to only those tools, which
REALLY NEED to keep files accross reboots.

> hier(7) tells you that /tmp can be cleared at boot, and /var/tmp
> won't be - that's important knowledge.  I don't think it was ever
> intended to mandate that only files which you want kept beyond
> reboots should go in /var/tmp.
> 
>   | So (IMHO) updatedb.csh really should use /tmp - if this doesn't work for
>   | some user [s]he will have to adjust the size of /tmp or set TMPDIR (e.g. in
>   | weekly.conf) to something else - as [s]he has to do with every other program.
> 
> I'd say exactly the opposite - put things back the way they were, if
> some user needs /tmp to be used because they have a very small /var, then
> they get to set TMPDIR ...

I for one think that things should be consitant - e.g. use /tmp.
If anyone feels like the right place to put temporary files
is /var/tmp, the person should set TMPDIR accordingly.

> ps: is no-one else other than me itrritated that updatedb is written in
> csh rather than sh - if there's no objection, I'll convert it.
> Previous experience doing this is that non-trivial scripts usually shrink
> to about half the size, and become an order of magnitude clearer
> when this is done...

Rewriting it to sh would be probably good thing. But please keep
the /tmp as the default temporary directory.

Jaromir

P.S. this should be moved off source-changes to tech-userlevel, IMHO.