[Nottingham] any issues symlinking /tmp -> /var/tmp ?

[Graeme Fowler]

On Sat 13 Aug 2005 18:35:43 BST , Michael <perl at tecspy.com> wrote:
> Quick question, on my Debian-based system I would like to symlink 
> /tmp to /var/tmp since /var is on a separate partition with space and 
> / is occasionally quickly filled. Any golden rules broken by doing 
> this?

"religious" arguments aside. no, not really. Especially if you mount 
/var with the "noexec" option - a good idea against random executables, 
barring someone running:

/lib/ld-<ver>.so <binary>

For those who haven't seen that before, it's a deadly sneaky way of 
running executables on partitions with the noexec flag set :)

Commercially, a number of distributions have shipped with /tmp as a 
symlink to somewhere else. In my experience the obvious one is the now 
defunct CobaltOS, shipped with the RaQ, Qube and other appliances; 
Cobalt symlinked /tmp and /var/tmp to /home/tmp for reasons of space 
(not security).

In my experience it's a good way to work around a repeating problem if 
you have duff web scripts filling up /tmp with (say) PHP uploads. But 
if you have that problem you can always recompile PHP (or whatever 
else) to use a different temp path in the first place :)

What particular reasons do you have for / filling up so quickly? Again, 
in my experience this indicates poor system design somewhere (no 
offence intended).

Graeme