0 
0 I am no Linux wizard by any standard. During the installation of some piece of Oracle software, I ran into a an error, indicating that my /tmp folder had too little space.
The installer was right about that. Unfortunately, the /tmp folder was on a device that I could not extend. So I tried to persuade the installer to use a different location for its temporary files:
TEMP=/media/sf_host_temp/tmp
TMPDIR=/media/sf_host_temp/tmp
export TEMP TMPDIR
Unfortunately, the installer ignored these settings. I then tried to replace folder /tmp with a symbolic folder link, also named /tmp but referring to a folder on a different device with plenty of space. And that did the trick:
//save my current tmp folder
mv /tmp /tmp_bak
// create a symbolic link called /tmp that refers to /u01/tmp
ln -s /u01/tmp /tmp
//grant permissions on /u01/tmp to the whole wide world
chmod 777 /u01/tmp
At this point, the installer fortunately could do its job, happily using /u01/tmp as its temporary storage.
After the installation was complete, I removed the symbolic link and renamed /tmp_bak back to /tmp.
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I really appreciate this
I was installing a game on a linux machine, and kept running into disk usage errors, even though I knew I had plenty of available space. Turns out tmp was being filled, then kicking the updater. I made a symlink in the directory the game was using ‘/tmp/ankama/cache’ and finally, success.
Hmm, works for me all the time. When I read your blog, you use TEMP and TMPDIR but not TMP. This might be the reason.
Hi Olaf,
My problem was that redefining TMP and TEMP did not work in this case. I tried them – but alas… Hence the trick with the symbolic link.
thanks for your reply.
Lucas
Actually, using TMP and TEMP works pretty well and this trick is not required.
export TMP=/my/temp
export TEMP=$TMP