Package: findutils
Version: 4.1.20-6
Severity: minor
File: /usr/bin/updatedb
Hi
We had a problem today on one system where /var would be full every
night. We figured out that /var/tmp/ was full with hundreds of megabytes
of files with names like 'sortXb87kd'. Some inspection led me to the
assumption that those are buffer files from sort, which it places in
TMPDIR, which is set to /var/tmp/ here:
------/usr/bin/updatedb
# Directory to hold intermediate files.
if test -d /var/tmp; then
: ${TMPDIR=/var/tmp}
elif test -d /usr/tmp; then
: ${TMPDIR=/usr/tmp}
else
: ${TMPDIR=/tmp}
fi
export TMPDIR
--------
Since those are absolutely temporary files, and can grow quite large on
systems with many files, I suggest to prefer /tmp over /var/tmp or to
reset TMPDIR to /tmp when calling sort.
Overflowing /var is bad enough, but when it happens like this it can be
pretty hard to track down and will lead to bizarre malfunctions.
HTH, 2ri
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.26
Locale: LANG=de_CH, LC_CTYPE=de_CH (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Versions of packages findutils depends on:
ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-22 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
-- no debconf information
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