Changing temporary file folder location in linux (for everything on the system)?

Question

Currently its /tmp

How can I set it to /anythingelse so that all applications use that subsequently?

Solution 1

sudo rmdir /tmp && ln -s /some/other/loc /tmp

Alternatively, set the environment variable TMPDIR at the highest level possible. For the environment, or per user.

Solution 2

Specific applications may have configuration options or environment variables for this, but in general *nix systems are supposed to use /tmp for temporary files, and this cannot be changed.

Solution 3

You can, if you really insist, make /tmp be a symbolic link to whatever location you want (Matt Joiner's answer gives the specific command to do that).

For example, on Mac OS, /tmp is a symlink to /private/tmp. This arrangement can be used to facilitate the ability to NFS-mount / (presumably read-only) while keeping system-specific files that can't be shared (/etc, /tmp, and so forth) in a /private partition on a local disk.

Comments

[Mark Embling]

Why would you want to do this?

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

This does not change it from /tmp. This merely changes where /tmp points.

[Matt Joiner]

The clue is in "all applications subsequently". It doesn't get sweeter.

[Matt Joiner]

Changing TMPDIR, does change it from /tmp.

[CodeBy]

after doing that some apps didn't run: "cannot create temporary directory for the root file system: Permission denied"

[Matt Joiner]

You will probably need to create the directory in advance, and give everyone permissions.