Subject: Re: bug#34768: guix-daemon tmpfs out of space on parabola

From: Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2019 15:31:13 +0100

Hullo,

swedebugia wrote:
> I'm trying to build New Moon (unbranded palemoon browser) in 
> parabola.
> The tmpfs i 2G which is way too little it seems.
>
> I read the man page of guix-daemon and the manual and could not 
> find a
> way to point guix-daemon to another tmpdir than /tmp.

Well, TMPDIR= should Just Work :-)

You'll have to set it to the environment of guix-daemon (and 
restart the daemon) for it to have any effect.  How that's done 
depends on your service manager/init system.

I guess a ‘set-tmpdir’ RPC could be added to the protocol.  I 
haven't thought through the security implications, and IMO it's 
just papering over the real bug, which is…

> Is this a bug?

Not sure what exactly you're referring to, but yes, I do think 
that using /tmp instead of /var/tmp (or any non-tmpfs) is a bug by 
modern(?) conventions.  It's guaranteed to break eventually on 
almost every non-Guix System, and when it doesn't it's an abuse of 
RAM and swap space.

Kind regards,

T G-R