Re: How to convert /tmp to memfs after install

From: Bela Lubkin (filbo_at_armory.com)
Date: 10/18/05 

Date: 17 Oct 2005 21:40:29 -0400

Jean-Pierre Radley wrote:

> Bela Lubkin typed (on Mon, Oct 17, 2005 at 04:18:16PM -0400):
>
> | Just be sure you know what you're getting into. Early builds of OSR6
> | used the UnixWare startup scripts that would set /tmp up as a memfs.
> | Due to observed problems, this was deliberately changed back to having
> | /tmp be a regular directory, implicitly on the root filesystem.
>
> ...
>
> | Ah, one issue that I do remember: OSR5's `vi` uses /tmp as the default
> | directory for edit buffer files. After a crash (panic, power failure,
> | whatever), `vi` can recover interrupted edit sessions by reading
> | those edit buffers. This will not work if the directory is stored
> | on a memfs. But I don't remember whether OSR6 `vi` was changed to
> | avoid this problem by using a less volatile temporary directory.
> | (Before you test this for yourself, make sure you aren't already
> | overriding vi's temp dir with an environment variable or with vi's
> | "set dir=/somewhere/else" directive...)
>
> As shipped, vi on OSR 6.0.0 still uses /tmp, so here I've included
> 'dir=/usr/tmp' in my EXINIT, given that my /tmp is an memfs filesystem
> but my /usr/tmp is not.

That works for you, but it's difficult to implement for all users since
`vi` doesn't have a system-wide exrc file. You could create one in each
user's home directory (add it to the /usr/lib/mkuser/... scripts), but
that's clumsy.

Plus, there may be more obscure dependencies that you haven't noticed,
but are still harming you in some manner.

>Bela<