smaug@eng.umd.edu (Kurt Lidl) (09/22/89)
Recently I tried to set the sticky bit on the /tmp directory of a machine here (a 3/60 running 4.0.1). Within two days, the machine crashed due to a shortage of inodes in the / partition. Looking in the /tmp directory showed a huge collection of .getwdXXX files, with the "XXX" being a pid, I assume. Sun claims that setting the sticky bit on a directory will not allow anybody other than the owner to remove that file, regardless of the permissions on the directory (even with rwxrwxrwx, only the owner of the file could remove it). What I want to know is this just an implementation problem, or is there more to the problem? It seems that whatever is creating the .getwdXXX files ought to clean up after itself a little better. Any ideas on how to combat this problem? Any replies welcome (E-Mail preferred.) -- ================================================================== == Kurt J. Lidl (smaug@hellcat.eng.umd.edu) (301) 454-3184 == == UUCP: uunet!mimsy!smaug (301) 454-1526 == ==========="X Windows: Power Tools for Power Fools"===============
davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (09/22/89)
It seems obvious that since you didn't previously have this problem, whatever creates those files in tmp *is* trying to clean up after itself. For some reason the UID of the creating and deleting processes are not the same. You should find out what's happening, then either run something setuid, run a cleanup as root, or turn the bit back off. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called 'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see that the world is flat!" - anon