Follow-up Comment #1, bug #13774 (project findutils):
Traditionally /var/tmp has greater capacity, and is not memory-backed. GNU
sort uses a mixture of RAM and temporary files, spilling out to disk for
datasets larger than "--buffer-size". Therefore it's especially silly to
use /tmp for scratch files on systems where this is actually stored in VM
(e.g. Solaris). There have also been bug reports in the past caused by
people running out of space in /tmp (or /). Some systems have a relatively
vanilla root filesystem but vast numbers of files in other filsystems.
In short, /var/tmp is traditionally bigger and that can sometimes make the
difference between working and not working.
If the "sort" command is leaving temporary files behind, that might be a bug
in sort (unless perhaps it has been killed).
If you want sort to use a different subdirectory I suggest you set TMPDIR in
/etc/updatedb.conf. I will modify updatedb itself not to override TMPDIR if
it is already set.
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