Sharing /tmp through NFS

[Gregory N. Bond]

In article v7n97/11 weltyc at fs3.cs.rpi.edu (Christopher A. Welty) writes:
>I wonder if anyone has tried using one NFS-mounted /tmp directory for a
>group of machines.  I forsee possible problems with temp files names that
>have the same name, it would seem like a trivial thing to check for - but
>does sunos do it....

I would NOT recommend this for two reasons:

1) It would be SLOW.  /tmp is one of those places you use a LOT, and
making it NFS mounted would have quite a noticable impact in editors among
other things.

2) It would cause problems with duplicate names.  Many shell scripts (and
I assume programs) make unique tmp filenames based on the PID which is
unique on a single workstation, but NOT guaranteed unique across a
network.  Imagine if two users started vi on different files on different
machines, but with the same PID - disaster, or at least confusion, as both
editors proceed to use the same tmp file to edit from....

Greg.

Gregory Bond, Burdett Buckeridge & Young Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
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