On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:58:03 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: > My particular problem is a project in which I regularly need to sort > files 2 to 3 GB in size on a computer with less than 1 GB of ram and 370 > GB of rotating disk. But I am sure there are other problems needing > real, physical scratch space running very nicely on computers old enough > to have once run woody. And now they are to be broken by something in > wheezy software? Can this happen? Really? > > I hope some work-around that actually survives testing is suggested > soon.
Paul, As others already have stated, your problem is solved by either: 1. Disabling the usage of "tmpfs" by "/tmp" aka: "conservative/what-just-works" approach alias: "take it from the disk, babe" This is a setting you can easily tweak from "/etc/default/rcS" file by editing the variable "RAMTMP=no" and this has no additional requirements, that is, you can have: 1.1 A physical dedicated mount point for "/tmp" in your hard disk. The size limit here is imposed by the size of the "/tmp" partition. 1.2 Or you can have no "/tmp" mount point at all in which case the whole root mount point "/" will be used to hold the data that need to be placed under "/tmp". The size limit here is imposed by the size of the whole "/" partition. 2. Enabling the usage of "tmpfs" by "/tmp" aka: "need for speed/living in the edge" approach alias: "take it from the RAM, babe" This is now the default setting which can lead to some problems because the default value for this parameter is calculated taking into account a unique variable (the computer's RAM size) and thus setting the size of "/ tmp" as little/much as 20% of its value. This default value can be, of course, customized by the user so you can adjust the size to be used as litte/big as you want (though there are also size limits). Hope now is more clear :-) Greetings, -- Camaleón -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/jlcl4c$mab$9...@dough.gmane.org