Very Computer

The /tmp mountpoint is a filesystem built on free swapspace from the operating
system.  The amount of "kbytes" represents the amount of free swapspace, thus
as swap is used and freed from the system, this column will change for the /tmp
filesystem.  When you create files in /tmp, you allocate out of the free swap
area.  Thus, if you use up all of /tmp with files, your machine will have
no swap space left.  All swapfiles, raw partitions allocated for swap, etc
boil into 1 number for both the total virtual space available, and thus for the
amount of space usable by /tmp.  If you keep on running out of swap, you
may want to see if anything is generating large files to /tmp.

Scott

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: Last but not least:
: when you perform a df -k and you look at the /tmp
: it changes . Is there a correlation between the space free on the tmp
: and the swap it takes?

The tmp directory uses a special file system: tmpfs. Tmpfs is a virtual
file system: is uses swap space instead of disk space to save files. This
has as a consequence that FREE_SWAP_SPACE+AMOUNT_OF_KB_USED_IN_TMP = constant.

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: : Last but not least:
: : when you perform a df -k and you look at the /tmp
: : it changes . Is there a correlation between the space free on the tmp
: : and the swap it takes?

: The tmp directory uses a special file system: tmpfs. Tmpfs is a virtual
: file system: is uses swap space instead of disk space to save files. This
: has as a consequence that FREE_SWAP_SPACE+AMOUNT_OF_KB_USED_IN_TMP = constant.

That would seem to imply that you would need to have a lot more swap space
than in SunOS 4.  How much swap space should you have?

Note that SunOS 4.1.x had the option of using tmpfs.  Many of our
remaining SunOS 4.1.x machines do.  Also note that you aren't
-required- to make /tmp a tmpfs in SunOS 5.x, it's just done that way
by default.  I believe all of our SunOS 5.x machines have /tmp set up
as a tmpfs.

Also, in SunOS 5.x, "virtual memory = phys ram + swap space", not
"virtual memory = swap space", as things were in SunOS 4.1.x.

So it depends on the (major) release of the OS, how much stuff your
users tuck in /tmp, and how much physical memory you have.

Well personally, I use 2 times the amount of memory making sure that
each partition is the same size as, or larger than, the physical memory.
However I do *not* use tmpfs on my systems but have a seperate partition
between 100M and 350M depending on the system's needs. (Which may be
overkill for some systems that don't see much activity.)

Ciao,

--
Richard Bainter          Mundanely     |    System Analyst        - OMG/CSD
Pug                      Generally     |    Applied Research Labs - U.Texas

Note: The views may not reflect my employers, or even my own for that matter.