Question

19

Why doesn't /tmp use tmpfs?

rated 0 times [ 19] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 20462 / 1 Year ago, wed, january 18, 2023, 1:08:26

I have loads of RAM and I use very little. I also do record some screencasts with gtk-recordmydesktop, which by default saves to /tmp while recording. I assumed that it would mean storing to RAM as much as possible, but then I actually checked and found that /tmp isn't mounted with tmpfs. Why is that?

Answers

Only authorized users can answer the question. Please sign in first, or register a free account.

allally

Add To Favorites

Follow

Total Points: 487

Total Questions: 106

Total Answers: 110

Location: Laos

Member since Sun, Jul 3, 2022

2 Years ago

allally questions

1 How to make snap Firefox use locally installed fonts?

Fri, Sep 3, 21, 04:34, 3 Years ago

1 No input and output sound device. Can't Install Pulseaudio after deletion

Sun, Oct 30, 22, 12:18, 2 Years ago

1 How do I enable Wayland on Ubuntu 21.10 (NVIDIA)?

Sat, Jan 29, 22, 13:30, 2 Years ago

1 Can you run Compute Benchmark (GPU) using Geekbench 5 on 20.04?

Fri, Oct 14, 22, 21:27, 2 Years ago

1 `ls -l` output duration instead of date/time eg "5 mins"/"6 hours"/"7 days" etc?

Sat, Sep 4, 21, 18:50, 3 Years ago

View All

answered 1 Year ago nnaisdio · Accepted Answer

I think you answered your own question. A lot of programs use /tmp for storing temporary files, and they can be huge.

For example Brasero defaults to that directory to store a CD/DVD's image file, which can be 4.7 GB of size. It's not worth risking a serious slowdown (or a system lockup) in an out of memory situation if your RAM and swap get full.

For advanced users it's no problem to change some applications' defaults and mount /tmp as tmpfs. For general use it's just not worth the risk I guess.