tmpdir in users home dir

[Pascal J . Bourguignon]

Rogelio Serrano writes:
> is it better to have temporary directories in the users home 
> directory except those used by system services and system 
> daemons?

It depends on what kind of temporary file you're considering.

/tmp is sometimes placed on a special file system for
performances. Eg. it's usually on the local hard disk, while the user
home dir may be several hundred meters or kilometers away.

/tmp usually does not survive the next reboot, while the user home dir
usually survives even complete hardware and system software "upgrades".


I have a ~/tmp where I store my unsorted files.  It's temporary but I
have in it some files dating back 1992, about ten computers and thirty
OS old. (Yes, I'm a little late in sorting my files).

On the other hand, there are in /tmp user directories /tmp/user1,
/tmp/user2 where applications store temporary files for each users,
and this /tmp gets even cleaned selectively more often than reboots
for we don't reboot often with Linux...


Note that there is this /var/tmp that is not even cleaned over reboots
for application temporary files.


I'd say that usually, temporary files are better put in /tmp.  In some
cases, it's worthwhile to let the user configure where the temporary
files are to be put, when they're big for example.  Then a default or
a preference panel is indicated.

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein