[lug] CVS temporary files

[Brad Doctor]

On the CVS server, add the '-T' switch and specify a location other than /tmp.
The cvs module is larger than 128M...

-brad

> Hey all--
> 
> As a longtime convert to CVS, I recommend it to many developers for 
> software projects.  I helped a small company set it up on an in-house 
> server, and they keep seeing problems when many people are making 
> simultaneous updates.  Specifically, they get an error message like 
> this:
> 
> cannot create_adm_p /tmp/cvs-serv712/project
> No space left on device
> 
> When I do a 'cvs checkout project' on my client machine, I see the CVS 
> server creating a /tmp/cvs-serv[nnn[ directory and then filling it with 
> a directory tree that mirrors the project.  Inside each directory is a 
> handful of text files (Entries, Entries.Log, Repository, and Root), 
> none of which are more than a few kilobytes in size.  All told, a full 
> checkout might presumably consume a megabyte of temporary space doing 
> this.  As soon as the checkout is complete (or interrupted), the server 
> wipes the tree.
> 
> I have /tmp mounted as tmpfs with 128MB allocated to it-- in other 
> words, the /tmp partition can't grow larger than 128MB.  There are 
> perhaps a dozen developers on the project, and it's highly doubtful 
> that every one of them is doing a full checkout simultaneously.  Even 
> if they were, I would expect no more than 15-20MB of space to be needed 
> by the CVS server.
> 
> I looked at the documentation and found a "LockDir" item, but that 
> appears to control where CVS stores a record of what directory it's 
> currently processing (so someone doesn't update a file in a directory 
> that's being checked out).  And that takes only a handful of bytes, so 
> I don't think it's the problem.
> 
> Has anyone seen this kind of behavior, or have suggestions about how to 
> avoid it?  I've never personally seen the error message above, but 
> several fairly savvy developers have reported it.  They're all using a 
> Mac OS X client, whereas I'm on a Linux box.  I can't imagine it makes 
> that much difference, though.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jeff
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-- 
Brad Doctor, CISSP