<SOLVED> Putting /tmp on tmpfs

[philotux]

I just came across the following blogpost at https://blog.ubuntu.com/2016/01/20/data ... p-on-tmpfs
I quote:

Put /tmp on tmpfs and you’ll improve your Linux system’s I/O, reduce your carbon foot print and electricity usage, stretch the battery life of your laptop, extend the longevity of your SSDs, and provide stronger security.

And the method proposed for doing this:

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echo "tmpfs /tmp tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
sudo reboot

My question is if I should go ahead and apply this? Is there anything I should consider like any downsides of mounting the /tmp in the memory (if that is what happens if I have understood it correctly)? Can this method be used for other directories to be put on tmpfs with the gains mentioned in the quote above and in that case for which ones is it safe to do that?

Thanks in advance for your comments!

[dolphin_oracle]

just make sure /tmp is a directory and not a symlink first. if its a symlink, then just remove the symlink, make a directory with 1777 permissions, and then do your fstab modification and then reboot.

I can't think of a downside, other than the potential memory usage, which is likely to be small.

[philotux]

just make sure /tmp is a directory and not a symlink first. if its a symlink, then just remove the symlink, make a directory with 1777 permissions, and then do your fstab modification and then reboot.

It looks like it is a symlink. So after removing the symlink, is it this:

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sudo mkdir /tmp
sudo chmod 1777 /tmp

what i need to do?

[dolphin_oracle]

now you can do your fstab stuff for the tmpfs and reboot.

just don't do too much else until you reboot, because anything you have running that is looking for a file in /tmp won't be able to find it anymore.

[philotux]

Alright. Will do. Thanks d_o!

[philotux]

Going to reboot now. Will come back in a short while with the report.

[philotux]

System booted just fine. Do I need to run some check to make sure everything is alright?
Are there other stuff that are safe to put on tmpfs?

[dolphin_oracle]

System booted just fine. Do I need to run some check to make sure everything is alright?
Are there other stuff that is safe to put on tmpfs?

I can't tell you about what's safe and what's not. I can tell you not to put /var/tmp on a tmpfs because that directory is expected to survive reboots and a tmpfs won't since its in memory.

you can look at the output of "df" to see all mounts, including your tmpfs mounts.

[philotux]

I can't tell you about what's safe and what's not. I can tell you not to put /var/tmp on a tmpfs because that directory is expected to survive reboots and a tmpfs won't since its in memory.

you can look at the output of "df" to see all mounts, including your tmpfs mounts.

Alright, I think I'll settle as it is. Here is the:

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df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            3.9G     0  3.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs           789M  1.3M  788M   1% /run
/dev/sda11       25G  9.8G   14G  42% /
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           1.6G     0  1.6G   0% /run/shm
/dev/sda12       15G  5.9G  8.1G  43% /home/philotux
/dev/sda13       62G   30G   33G  48% /media/Storage
tmpfs           512M  8.0K  512M   1% /tmp
cgroup           12K     0   12K   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           789M  4.0K  789M   1% /run/user/115
tmpfs           789M   28K  789M   1% /run/user/1000

Great help! Thanks d_o!

[philotux]

Is putting ~/.cache on tmpfs any good or bad idea?