Insufficient system storage

[James Wilkinson]

Anne Wilson wrote:
> That's worth bearing in mind.  It looks as though I ought to have a separate 
> partition for /tmp.  I need help, though, to add it at this point.

One thing you can do if you have enough swap is to add a tmpfs /tmp.
That looks like
none /tmp tmpfs defaults,nodev,noexec 0 0
in /etc/fstab.

Data in a tmpfs may get stored in memory or may get swapped to disk: the
computer handles it in the same way as it handles any other memory. But
it *will* be deleted whenever the computer reboots. That means you don't
have to worry about clearing out /tmp: it will do it automatically.

The nodev,noexec bits are security paranoia: the nodev bit means you
can't use device nodes[1] on it, and the noexec bit means you can't run
programs from it (which could be a problem in certain circumstances).

Hope this helps,

James.

[1] You know that /dev/hda is a file on disk which *points* to your hard
drive? It only represents your hard drive in the same way that an icon,
a picture, represents a program?

It's theoretically possible to have a /tmp/hda which points to your hard
drive in just the same way.
-- 
E-mail address: james | "This thing is bigger than the both of us!"
@westexe.demon.co.uk  | "Oh Tom! It's ... it's an elephant!"