8.10 The Temporary File Directory (tmp)

   

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8.10 The Temporary File Directory (/tmp)

This directory has permissions for everybody to create or delete files. Most of the time, temporary files are placed in this directory and are deleted from time to time. Many system administrators prefer to empty this directory at boot time to avoid the piling up of unnecessary files. Anybody creating files in this directory must be aware of the public nature of this directory, and no important file should be placed here. It is a better idea to enable the sticky bit on this directory so that a user may not delete files in this directory created by other users.

Any applications that need to create temporary files should do so in the /var/tmp directory instead of /tmp .

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