On Fri, 2012-06-01 at 11:56 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote: > On Fri, 2012-06-01 at 14:46 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote: > > > IMHO *telling* the user how to manage /tmp is wrong, whichever side of > > the argument you're on. *Asking* them how to manage it is the right > > way. That was my point in that mail. > > > > *I* want /tmp on disk. I still don't want someone else telling me I > > have to do it that way. > > You are entirely free to configure it through /etc/fstab. But to say > that 'the system' should ask 'the user' to make every major config > choice for it is just untenable and absurd. Ok, say I have installed my new laptop and discover that the new /tmp arrangement is not good for me and I'd rather keep /tmp on disk, how do you go about that ? (No I do not have any un-partitioned space left, and using the root file system is fine by me) > Yes, it's 'just' another checkbox in the installer. Feel free to join > #anaconda and see how easy it is to keep track of the seventy zillion > checkboxes (i.e. codepaths) we currently have in the installer when > trying to redesign it in a way that makes any goddamn sense. I think the question here is can someone please point to a page with numbers that justify /tmp -> tmpfs be the default for the most common cases ? laptop / vm with limited RAM. > Philosophically: the whole _job_ of a distribution is to make choices > for 'the user'. That's what we do. We look at the bewildering array of > choices you can make in deploying a bunch of bits to a system in order > to be able to actually use it, and make lots of those choices, so that > people can go ahead and stick a disc in a drive and click a few buttons > and get a working system, instead of spending three weeks researching > what a tmpfs even _is_. Absolutely correct, but there should be some good rationale when a change impact decades of use and habit and has the potential of breaking stuff. > Let's make some logical extensions of your position. When I start > installing Fedora, it should ask me whether I want to install grub, > grub2, or lilo. Then ask me what framebuffer mode and console font I'd > like to use. Then it should probably ask me whether to use udev or a > static /dev tree. Then it could maybe ask what system initialization > daemon it should use, systemd or upstart. Then ask whether we want to > use dpkg or rpm, and access a different repository accordingly. Then we > could get into the real meaty stuff, like do I want ash or bash. Do I > want chronyd or ntpd. > > It's just freaking absurd. Our job is to deploy a cohesive system - i.e. > to make choices about basic system design. Not to create a giant > choose-your-own-adventure interface to encapsulate all the possible > options of system configuration policy. I totally agree here, we do not want to have this kind of choices, but we want *safe* defaults. The current /tmp setup is reasonably safe and fast enough for current needs, the transition to tmpfs has the potential of breaking a lot of stuff, so what is so good in tmpfs to warrant this big change ? Where are the numbers ? Simo. -- Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel