XPost: linux.debian.doc
Hi,
Thanks for your feedback. I'm sending this to
https://bugs.debian.org/1070482 since it's more useful there I guess.
In general, suggestions for improving the Debian trixie release notes are useful if posted as bugs to the 'release-notes' pseudo-package. Alternatively, use our gitlab interface at salsa.debian.org.
Bye,
Joost
On Tue, May 20, 2025 at 06:43:05AM -0400,
lists@L8R.net wrote to
debian-doc@lists.debian.org:
Hello All,
I've been looking into testing trixie, and so looking here:
https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/upgrading.html
I know this may be a beta, non-current version. Yet I'd like to express
a desire to get something into this doc. I'm happy to help if I can.
The /tmp -> tmpfs change is huge for me. I suspect it's huge for many others. The change is here, I'm not trying to alter this change, but
Debian has always been about informed change whenever possible.
So from the perspective of someone that is used to the old behaviour for decades, a definitive, "from the source" guide about the change is key to
me. Not something gleamed from random posts around the net.
And it cannot be stressed how much this change will break some workflows.
So to mitigate impact, at the very least this change needs to be
mentioned.
Questions I have, which are not clear to me and I believe should be
covered in the doc:
1) What happens if /tmp fills up?
Does it automatically write to disk in some unknown place? Or does it
just throw an error?
2) What are the defaults?
How much RAM is the default config set to? Will it push stuff out of VM space?
3) Are files still deleted upon boot or not?
It seems apparent, but validation is important
4) How to work around this?
This is new in Trixie. There are a myriad of workflows designed for old Debian defaults, including unarchiving TB sized archives into /tmp, expecting lock files to never change regardless of how long they are there, and far more.
It's OK that we don't all have the same workflow. It doesn't matter what others do here. All that matters is that this can greatly impact people,
and they may need *months* to move to a config where stuff just vanishes
from /tmp, or where stuff is too big for /tmp.
As with any other massive and huge change, Debian typically allows a
release without breaking for the old behaviour. A simple work around, to
buy time, is to disable mounting tmpfs.
There should be a 'just do this', so that people aren't finding poor or disastrous ways randomly around the net.
--
Anyhow, that's my first walk through. Once in install trixie on some machines, I'll have better insight.
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