[kde-linux] The /tmp folder and its contents - what can I delete

[Kevin Krammer]

On Friday 27 October 2006 07:29, Aphofis.com - Network Operations Centre 
wrote:
> My /tmp directory is growing with various logs and contains many other
> files - Ordinarily I would have NO hesitation in periodically deleting
> the contents of most /tmp directories
> however as I relatively new to Linux I am concerned if this will cause
> problems. I ask the same question about the /var/tmp directory which
> grows and grows with significant impact to the amount of space its
> taking up. There are a massive number of sub directories below /var/tmp
> as well as an abundant number of files in that directory.
>
> I am using KDE 3.5.1 Level "a" and my distro is SUSE Linux 10.1

It is quite likely that SUSE has a cleanup task which can run periodically to 
remove stale files, but it might not be activated by default.

There are tools that can check if a file is currently used by a process and 
tools that can find files that haven't been accessed for a period of time.

I think it is not appropriate to discuss this in detail on a KDE mailinglist, 
however for KDE, as Dale already mentioned, it is save to 
delete /var/tmp/kde-cache and /tmp/kde-username directories if you are sure 
that no user is currently logged in, for example system being in runlevel 1 
(single user or maintenance mode)

Since this is quite likely an issue for other sysadmins as well, I'd suggest 
looking for a broader audience by asking on a general Linux support channel, 
or even on a Novell/SUSE one (could have cleanup tasks as mentioned above)

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring
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