Save your disk, write files directly into RAM with /dev/shm

Rather than re-write your scripts to store temp files into /dev/shm, you can just mount /tmp using the tmpfs file system and get the same benefit for all your programs. Some distros do this by default.

The relevant line from fstab is:

    tmpfs /tmp            tmpfs    noatime 0       2

Now any program that writes to /tmp will be writing to a RAM disk, thus sparing unnecessary wear on my SSD.

I do mention this offhand in the article: "The existence of /dev/shm is a boon for me mostly because it means I never have to worry about whether /tmp is really RAM-based again."

Now you have to worry about whether you can access /dev/shm. Please encourage people to use supported interfaces instead of random voodoo (anything under /dev that wasn't there in 1995) for day-to-day tasks.

/dev/shm is typically world-writable by default:

    $ ls -ld /dev/shm
    drwxrwxrwt 3 root root 120 Jun 32 02:47 /dev/shm/

Incidentally, "30 years ago" is the cutoff date for music being considered the oldies. This just made me realize Nevermind is now an oldie, and soon The Lonesome Crowded West will be too.

> /dev/shm is typically world-writable by default:

You are relying on random implementation details instead of universal APIs that work across OSes and environments. Please stop.

So help me God, if I make a Linux system, I will make it _not_ have a /dev/shm just to avoid people relying on non-standard stuff for no good reason. Honestly, it's because of stuff like this that we need Docker.