[Pkg-chromium-maint] Bug#722571: Bug#722571: chromium: Writes short-lived temp files to /var/tmp instead of /tmp

[Julian Andres Klode]

On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 12:33:31PM +0200, Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 12:26 PM, Julian Andres Klode <jak at debian.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 10:23 AM, Giuseppe Iuculano
> > <giuseppe at iuculano.it> wrote:
> >> On 12/09/2013 14:11, Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> >>> Chromium writes several short-lived files to /var/tmp, but those
> >>> should be written to /tmp. Users with SSDs often mount a tmpfs on
> >>> /tmp to reduce writes to the SSD. But /var/tmp cannot be a tmpfs,
> >>> as it needs to be preserved across reboots. Writing those short-lived
> >>> files to /var/tmp thus causes unnecessary writes to the SSD.
> >>
> >>
> >> You can set it  in /etc/chromium/default :
> >>
> >> CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--password-store=detect --disk-cache-dir=/tmp"
> >>
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Giuseppe.
> >>
> >
> > It's not the cache. Those are temporary files with random names that
> > only exist for a second or shorter. My cache was on a tmpfs already.
> 
> As you can see in the shortened inotifywait -m log of my chromium
> startup, it creates the file, opens it, and  deletes it right away,
> but keeps it open.
> 
> /var/tmp/ CLOSE_NOWRITE,CLOSE,ISDIR
> /var/tmp/ CREATE etilqs_Y5xFMpBKNivTXdC
> /var/tmp/ OPEN etilqs_Y5xFMpBKNivTXdC
> /var/tmp/ DELETE etilqs_Y5xFMpBKNivTXdC
> /var/tmp/ MODIFY etilqs_Y5xFMpBKNivTXdC
> [... repeated ...]
> /var/tmp/ CREATE etilqs_Eq0G5Rar5TQzzIr
> /var/tmp/ OPEN etilqs_Eq0G5Rar5TQzzIr
> /var/tmp/ DELETE etilqs_Eq0G5Rar5TQzzIr
> /var/tmp/ MODIFY etilqs_Eq0G5Rar5TQzzIr
> /var/tmp/ MODIFY etilqs_Eq0G5Rar5TQzzIr
> /var/tmp/ MODIFY etilqs_Eq0G5Rar5TQzzIr
> /var/tmp/ CREATE etilqs_XIrqj6iwC6R36p7
> /var/tmp/ OPEN etilqs_XIrqj6iwC6R36p7
> /var/tmp/ DELETE etilqs_XIrqj6iwC6R36p7
> /var/tmp/ MODIFY etilqs_XIrqj6iwC6R36p7
> /var/tmp/ MODIFY etilqs_XIrqj6iwC6R36p7
> 
> It does not only do this at startup, but also during running; whenever
> I load a new website.

This is caused by sqlite3 (spell the prefix backwards). Exporting
TMPDIR=/tmp when starting chromium works around it. Basically patching
src/os_unix.c of the sqlite3 code to list /tmp before /var/tmp fixes
this.

I also reported this bug for the sqlite3 package now (#722699); but
chromium seems to bundle its own copy of sqlite3, so it would be good
to get this changed here as well. I'll let you know what the sqlite3
maintainer has to say.

-- 
Julian Andres Klode  - Debian Developer, Ubuntu Member

See http://wiki.debian.org/JulianAndresKlode and http://jak-linux.org/.