Inconsistent /tmp Sizes

[Cameron Hutchison]

Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote: 
>Kenneth Jacker wrote:
>> I have used Unix/Linux for *decades* and 
>> have never seen /tmp fill up with just the passage of time.

>And even if it did, the files that did it should be visible

Not really. It is a common idiom to open a file in /tmp and then delete
it. Since the file is still open, it will not be removed from the disk,
but there will be no directory entry in the filesystem pointing to it.

It looks like this is happening in this case based on the previously
posted output of lsof(8). It indicated some rather large deleted files
from the konsole application.

I suspect that konsole is not exitting and keeping the scrolback buffer
in the temp file, or that it is logging its session (but probably not,
since to be useful, the log would need to be in an undeleted file). I do
not use KDE, so this is a pure guess on my part.

Kenneth, when you are checking the space with df(1)/du(1) and looking at
deleted files with lsof(8), try first exitting all konsole instances.
Perhaps switch to a text console and run the commands from there. Check
the output of ps(1) to make sure konsole is not running.

Also, try configuring the scrollback buffer to something less,
particularly if it is set to unlimited.