/tmp folder and gcc

Question

I am using the maemo Operating System and the GCC compiler. I have an error when I compile an application: there is no enough space on /tmp. I have 10% of my space free so I don't understand why this happens.. anyway, is it possible to change the GCC configuration in order to use another folder (in another partition)?

Fredric

Answer 1

Set your TMPDIR environment variable to where you want GCC to put your temporary files. Or, use the -pipe flag to keep temporary files (except object files) in memory.

Assyria

In that case I hope you'll remember to accept the answer. @Fredric – Svelte

I have no environment variable named TMPDIR shall I make a new one? – Graphemics

Note that the TMPDIR has to actually exist, or GCC will silently keep using /tmp – Cyrille

Answer 2

Most likely your /tmp directory is mounted as a tmpfs filesystem. This means that the files in /tmp are actually stored in memory, not on disk. If this is the case /tmp will be limited to what you can fit in memory+swap, and everything in /tmp will be lost across reboots.

Use mount or df -T to see how /tmp is mounted.

Kiowa

/tmp's tmpfs is limited to a a rather small percentage of physical memory, by default, on Debian at least. – Cameleer

^ I don't know how things were in 2012 (though a cursory Google suggests this was the case even in 2006:), but in most cases, /tmp and /dev/shm are by default capped at a whopping 50% of available RAM, so I don't think there's much need to worry about that. – Huynh