Linux @lemmy.ml Zangoose @lemmy.world 1y ago

Reminder to clear your ~/.cache folder every now and then

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A screenshot of a file manager preview window for my ~/.cache folder, which takes up 164.3 GiB and has 246,049 files and 15,126 folders. The folder was first created about 1.75 years ago with my system

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Because of excessive RAM I symlink ~/.cache to /tmp. Additionally installing zramswap helps for this scenario.

Benefits are faster access, automatc purging between reboots and no wear to the NMVe drive.

Yes, this is a single user scenario.
- Isn't most of what's in there just filters downloaded from the internet? Python packages, browser cache, etc? Your system confirms you to redownloading everything all the time, no?
- This seems like a filename conflict waiting to happen. Why not just mount a tmpfs there?
  
  Like I said it's a cheap solution for a single user system. Ofc tmpfs would be better but has to be done for every user again
  
  You: It's a single user system
  Also you: Tmpfs would have to be done for every user
  
  And a /tmp/ symlink would have to be created for every user too, so I don't get your point
  
  Tmpfs is just as easy as making a symlink, but without the filename conflicts between files in ~/.config/ and /tmp/. You just need to add a line to /etc/fstab
  
  /usr/local/sbin/adduser.local
  
  One line in there and you can make it add a new line with appropriate /home/userX/.cache tmpfs line to fstab.
  
  Or, maybe a cleaner way, you might make a init/systemd service that, when booting, would run something like
  
  for each dir in /home do
  mount dir/.tmp -type tmpfs
  done
  
  I'm not at the computer now and I'm lazy to Google it, so this above is just a pseudo code and probably won't run.
  
  Neat, thanks for sharing
  
  Here's the above pseudocode in bash:
  
  find /home/ -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec mount none {}/.cache/ -t tmpfs -o size=16G \;
  
  for doesn't work here because it uses spaces to delimit strings, which could cause issues with filenames that contain spaces
  
  You can also create a systemd user service, which is useful if you don't have root access. The above mount command requires root, but the following doesn't and is more robust than symlinking to /tmp/:
  
  ln -s $(mktemp -dp /var/tmp/) ~/.config/
- Once I get more than 16GB of ram I'll definitely try that
- Thats not very secure. /tmp/ is usually 777

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