Differences between tmp folders

asked 2016-04-20 22:12:34 -0600

440 ●11 ●22 ●33

updated 2016-04-20 22:13:38 -0600

I'd like to know more about the differences and purposes of all the tmp directories I can find on my Fedora system. Which program uses which tmp folder?

/tmp
/usr/tmp (links to /var/tmp)
/var/tmp

and there is more...

/run/tmpfiles.d
/etc/tmpfiles.d
/usr/lib/tmpfiles.d
/var/lib/selinux/tmp
/var/spool/cups/tmp (ok, that's maybe some printer related temp data. I accept) -...

What are all these?

Do you recommend locating more than just /tmp into RAM? (here is my fstab:

none on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,relatime,seclabel,size=399352k)

)

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answered 2016-04-21 08:26:30 -0600

Pilgrim
111 ●3

/tmp may be, and sometimes is, cleaned on reboot.

/var/tmp is preserved between reboots.

/usr/tmp links to /var/tmp for compatibility with some programs.

/run is used for programs running at the moment and should be purged as the program finished

/etc/tmpfiles.d contains settings for creating the said temporary files and can be changed by user on a per-machine basis

/usr/lib/tmpfiles.d is the default configuration settings folder for said tmp files generation rules, that are provided with the packages

/var/lib/selinux/tmp holds temporary files for SELinux software. If you're really interested, you can read the documentation to find out what exactly is stored in there.

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answered 2016-04-21 12:08:11 -0600

cmurf
1167 ●40 ●29

Clarification. By default for some time on Fedora, tmpfs is mounted on /tmp so it definitely is cleaned between reboots. /var/tmp gets cleaned out regularly by systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service.

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