Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Using /var/tmp instead of /tmp

[John Thacker <johnthacker@xxxxxxxxx>]

I believe the main reason is that Fedora defaults /tmp to tmpfs (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/tmp-on-tmpfs) which thus limits it to the size of RAM (half that, at default). Temporary captures might use up that capacity (depending on the system), so hence the patch to use /var/tmp. From the feature page:

"We might need to patch a couple of packages not to store big files and files needing boot persistance in /tmp, but rather in /var/tmp."

John

On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 6:30 AM, Roland Knall <rknall@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Not sure why, because the two temp directories are different.

Judging by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard

/tmp is usually purged during a reboot (at least you cannot expect to survive it)

/var/tmp is not purged during a reboot

The Qt::Dir() related stuff is actually a bug and should default to the wsutil function or at least the same g_get_tmp_dir, as Gtk and Qt might have different methods of getting the tmp directory and by using a Qt specific version this may lead to file polution.

I think using /var/tmp was a decision by the package developer for the Fedora package. I honestly see no reasons behind that decision, except to wanting to access the tmp files and making sure they stay around. But this leads to an overly crowded /var/tmp after some time in my book, so I think it actually should change back to /tmp 

cheers

Roland

On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 11:25 AM, Martin Sehnoutka <msehnout@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

What are the pros and cons of using /var/tmp instead of /tmp for Wireshark?

In Fedora, there is this downstream patch, which makes Wireshark use
/var/tmp:
http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/wireshark.git/tree/wireshark-0008-move-default-temporary-directory-to-var-tmp.patch
so I'm just wondering why is it Fedora specific.

--
Martin Sehnoutka | Associate Software Engineer
PGP: 5FD64AF5
UTC+1 (CET)
RED HAT | TRIED. TESTED. TRUSTED.



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