I am trying to figure out what to do with my /tmp directory under FBSD 4.1
I noticed that /tmp currently lives on the root file system, where I
am unable to get the benefit of softupdates or mounting "nosuid".
(Is that true?)
The handbook mentions mounting the swap partition on /tmp using the MFS.
To quote from http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/kernelconfig-config.html:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
options MFS #Memory Filesystem
options MD_ROOT #MD is a potential root device
This is the memory-mapped filesystem. This is basically a RAM disk for fast storage of
temporary files, useful if you have a lot of
swap space that you want to take advantage of. A perfect place to mount an MFS
partition is on the /tmp directory, since many
programs store temporary data here. To mount an MFS RAM disk on /tmp, add the
following line to /etc/fstab:
/dev/ad1s2b /tmp mfs rw 0 0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I thought I had read on one of the FBSD mailing lists that the MFS is now
basically obsolete. As I understood it, the regular file system has
sophisticated caching built in and effectively acts like a memory file
system if the files are small enough. Conversely, using the MFS
results in two stages of caching and wastes RAM. Is that correct?
I noticed Matt Dillon wrote a handbook section on the VM system at
http://www.freeBSD.org/handbook/internals-vm.html that includes
some info on tuning, but it doesn't mention what to do with /tmp.
So what's the bottom line? Should I leave /tmp on the root file
system, create a dedicated partition for /tmp, or mount the
swap partition on /tmp using the MFS?
Thanks,
Allen
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