Subject: Re: [vserver] Suggestion: don't mount 16 MB tmpfs into /tmp per default
From: Nikolay Kichukov <hijacker@oldum.net>
Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 12:20:57 +0300

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Agreed.

Patrick Nagel wrote:
> Hi Ben,
> 
> On Wednesday 14 May 2008, Ben Green wrote:
>>> In my opinion, this default setting has too much potential of causing
>>> (sometimes hard-to-debug) trouble. The few Linux-VServer users who run
>>> 100+ installations should be able to figure out on their own that they
>>> should put guest's /tmp into a ramdisk, if a lot of accesses to /tmp
>>> cause performance issues.
>>> Patrick.
>> Perhaps this is a person thing, but I haven't found this issue hard to
>> debug. Checking the state of mounted file systems should be one of the
>> first ports of call when issues arrise. A low size for /tmp means that
>> these issues turn up sooner rather than later, which is much better IMHO.
>> TMPFS is the superior FS for the job.
>>
>> The problem I have had is that clamav doesn't work on Debian with this /tmp
>> size, as it needs space to unpack deffinitions IIRC.
> 
> /tmp was always empty, because after bouncing the message, dovecot removed it 
> from there. So there was only a tiny time window when it was full. My mistake 
> was not grepping for 'deliver' in maillog (I always grepped for 'postfix', 
> and only got that 'code 89' error). Probably others would have found the 
> cause more quickly. So.. you've got a point.
> 
> But still I think that less experienced Linux-VServer users (like me) will 
> more likely have trouble figuring out why something behaves oddly (and many 
> programs behave oddly when they run out of (temporary) disk space) than 
> experienced large-scale Linux-VServer users will have setting up tmpfs if 
> they think it's necessary.
> 
> I'm convinced that having the entry commented out, together with an 
> explanation what it does, would be better for the majority.
> 
> Patrick.
> 
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