root partition is full when trying to open big files

Question

I have big tar.gz and .rar files.

when i try to open them (even to amounted partition with over 500G) my root partition is consumed, i'm guessing it's something to do with temp files but i have no idea how to open it.

Here's my df -h output:

/dev/xvda1      7.9G  4.7G  2.9G  63% /
udev            3.7G  8.0K  3.7G   1% /dev
tmpfs           1.5G  176K  1.5G   1% /run
none            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none            3.7G     0  3.7G   0% /run/shm
/dev/xvdf       493G  9.1G  459G   2% /mnt/att
s3fs            256T     0  256T   0% /mnt/buckets3

How big are the files? What command are you using for extraction? — gparent, Jan 07 '13 at 19:23

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 07 '13 at 20:53

3

I believe that tar uses the /tmp directory for intermediate files. You have a couple of options.

One is to mount /tmp to a larger disk in your fstab. But that's a bit overkill.

Instead, you can set the $TMPDIR environment variable. If present, tar will use that instead of /tmp.

answered Jan 07 '13 at 20:53

paddy

238
2
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"I believe that tar uses the /tmp directory for intermediate files." -- Citation Needed, as the Wikipedeans say. I see no activity in `/tmp` via `strace` on a test decompress I just ran. – womble Jan 15 '19 at 06:30

root partition is full when trying to open big files

1 Answers1