Massive /tmp files

[@lbutlr]

On 21 Jan 2021, at 18:08, MRob <mrobti at insiberia.net> wrote:
> Hello,
> I just found user who has single folder (standard maildir format) that filled with over 8mil files and 800GB in the /tmp subdirectory of that folder:

Are they real files or hard links?

I've had some issues (in the past) with thousands of links being created to each message, resulting in many millions of "files". I even wrote a script to remove all the linked files leaving only one actual file behind, but I haven't had to do that in quite a while (a year? More?).

I don't seem to have the script handy (it's around somewhere), but this is basically what I did:

<https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/286780/61289>

> I think the dir ran out of inode space so its not ongoing problem. My question is only can I purge that folder without breaking something more? If it tries to re-fill again I will try to debug

AIUI tmp is temp and can go away, though I'd stop dovecot first just to be extra safe.

-- 
Science is the foot that kicks magic square in the nuts.