Re: [gentoo-user] Symlinking /usr/portage/distfiles

[Albert Hopkins <marduk@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, 2007-01-29 at 09:38 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Saturday 27 January 2007 18:40, Vlad Dogaru wrote:
> > One question though: is there a reason why PORTAGE_TMPDIR does not
> > default to /tmp?

I've been running PORTAGE_TMPDIR in /tmp for at least a couple of years
without any issues (actually /var/tmp/portage, but /var/tmp symlinks
to /tmp on most of my systems).

> The real nature of /tmp isn't adequate for portage, that's why it uses a 
> different one. If memory serves, the FHS defines /tmp as a temporary 
> place to store files, and the continued existence of the file after a 
> process has finished is not guaranteed. In other words, if there are no 
> existing locks on a file, it's up for summary deletion. This could be 
> fatal in a big compile - imagine if some cleaner process nuked a binary 
> compiled 4 hours ago in an openoffice compile....

I'm not sure if your memory is correct, but I've always been told
"never put anything in /tmp that you want to survive a reboot".  But
still using your def I suppose that process would be 'emerge' which, on
the default config, deletes the files before it finishes anyway.

Most cleaners have sane mtime/atime parameters that they don't interfere
with merges.  The the default Gentoo tmpwatch config for /tmp is 168
(336 hrs for /var/tmp/portage). I've never had an emerge take 168 hours.
If you do, you can adjust that parameter. I do also have DISTDIR
pointing to /var/portage/distfiles and I have a different policy for
tmpwatch for that.

> But the best reason is that some compiles are HUGE. Openoffice can take 
> up all of 5G with everything enabled, and as /tmp is often a tmpfs, 
> it's highly unlikely most users will have enough space on /tmp to 
> emerge it. 

Not that that's ever been a problem for me but you can always
temporarily divert it when compiling "HUGE" jobs.

    # PORTAGE_TMPDIR=/var/scratch/portage emerge openoffice

IMO it's more than worth the convenience/performance of running it
in /tmp than not.  As I've said I've been doing it for a long while and
I'd don't remember ever having files "disappear" or running out of space
on /tmp.  

But if you want to discuss FHS let's talk about how /usr/portage doesn't
belong in /usr ;-)

-m

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