Re: [Texmacs-dev] Re: [Bug #1789] temporary files are created in an insecure way

[Ralf Treinen]

On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 02:08:57PM +0100, address@hidden wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 12:54:04PM +0100, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
> > 
> > > > No, the caching may improve performance over *several* runs.
> > > 
> > > I agree. I just think cached stuff should not be in /home.
> > 
> > Yes, but not in /tmp or /var either, because these might be cleant.
> > I don't know of a /cache file system...
> 
> Actually, Debian uses /var/cache... But that this is system specific
> packaging issues. Maybe Ralph Treinen may enlighten us on that
> subject.

I didn't follow the discussion, but since you ask for my opinion 
here are the (hopefully) relevant parts from the Filesystem Hierrachy
Standard (v. 2.1). This is intended to be standard for UNIX-like
system. It is Debian policy to follow this standard but I can't tell
for other Unices.

/tmp
====

The /tmp directory shall be made available for programs that require
temporary files.

Although data stored in /tmp may be deleted in a site-specific manner,
it is recommended that files and directories located in /tmp be deleted
whenever the system is booted.

Programs shall not assume that any files or directories in /tmp are
preserved between invocations of the program. 

/var/cache
==========

/var/cache is intended for cached data from applications. Such data is
locally generated as a result of time-consuming I/O or calculation. The
application must be able to regenerate or restore the data. Unlike
/var/spool, the cached files can be deleted without data loss. The data
should remain valid between invocations of the application and rebooting
the system.

Files located under /var/cache may be expired in an application specific
manner, by the system administrator, or both. The application should
always be able to recover from manual deletion of these files (generally
because of a disk space shortage). No other requirements are made on the
data format of the cache directories. 


-Ralf.