kendall@wjh12.UUCP (Sam Kendall) (10/15/84)
> No utility should use /tmp for large files. That is what /usr/tmp is for.
(I think this is only supposed to be the case for USG UNIX. Do non-USG
utilities use /usr/tmp much or at all?) But I have seen a System V
system with a small /usr/tmp and a very large /tmp; conversely, I have
seen a 3B2 which came configured with a small /tmp and large /usr/tmp--but
the system utilities (compiler, assembler) on the 3B2 used /tmp by default,
leading to overflows!
There is an undocumented (?) way around this--the TMPDIR environment
variable, which many utilities on System V use to determine their choice
of /tmp directory, if TMPDIR is available. It would be nice if there
was a standard program which would look at the output of df and output
the proper TMPDIR value, perhaps based on a given amount of disk space
required--shell scripts or .profile's could use it. I have a use for
such things, and I think anyone else who uses a lot of tmp space (e.g.,
anyone who uses the wonderful but space-greedy System V C cross-
referencer "cxref") would also. Does anyone think this is a good idea?
Any volunteers to write it? I'm not on a System V system.
Sam Kendall {allegra,ihnp4,ima,amd}!wjh12!kendall
Delft Consulting Corp. decvax!genrad!wjh12!kendallgwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (10/16/84)
TMPDIR is documented but many utilities and user applications do not use the new tempnam() function but rather the old mktemp(). With Release 2 of UNIX System V, the C compiler has been changed to use /usr/tmp by default. The main utility that concerns me is "sort", which can really eat up temp space.
mab@druxp.UUCP (BlandMA) (10/18/84)
> The main utility that concerns me is > "sort", which can really eat up temp space. There is an undocumented flag in the System V sort(1) that allows you to specify the directory where it creates its temp files. Try "sort -T /new/temp/dir ...". I don't know if it exists in other versions of UN*X, and I don't know why it's not documented. -Alan Bland, ihnp4!druxp!mab, AT&T-ISL Denver
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (10/22/84)
> There is an undocumented flag in the System V sort(1) that allows you > to specify the directory where it creates its temp files. > Try "sort -T /new/temp/dir ...". I don't know if it exists in > other versions of UN*X, and I don't know why it's not documented. You're sure it's not documented? It *is* documented in V7! Talk about breaking the software, now USG is breaking the documentation... -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
jim@haring.UUCP (10/24/84)
> > The main utility that concerns me is > > "sort", which can really eat up temp space. > There is an undocumented flag in the System V sort(1) that allows you > to specify the directory where it creates its temp files. > Try "sort -T /new/temp/dir ...". I don't know if it exists in > other versions of UN*X, and I don't know why it's not documented. > -Alan Bland, ihnp4!druxp!mab, AT&T-ISL Denver '-T' is a documented flag in 4.2BSD. However, the buffer used to hold the directory name is only 30 bytes long in size, and caused someone here heartache a while ago. Jim McKie Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam mcvax!jim