[ale] cleaning out /tmp

[Chuck Huber]

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> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2007 11:45:26 -0400
> From: "Michael B. Trausch" <mike at trausch.us>
> Subject: Re: [ale] cleaning out /tmp
>> > By the way - such /tmp cleanout - I did say to check lsof or fuser -
>> > if you were doing a cron with system up I'd also suggest you not
>> > delete any file that had been updated on the present day - some
>> > programs create files then "close" them and later "open" them for
>> > other purposes.
>> > 
> 
> Hrm.  That's some odd behavior, I would think.  Why would a program do
> that... it would seem that it is saving state in /tmp by doing that, but
> really shouldn't it be using /var/* for that purpose?

Email clients will save attachments in /tmp before launching a helper
app.  They'll close it and use the tmp file name as an argument to the
helper.  Think about a PDF attachment and your mail client launching
xpdf or acrocread.

Enjoy,
    - Chuck

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