The /tmp directory must be made available for programs that require temporary files. Programs must not assume that any files or directories in /tmp are preserved between invocations of the program. /var/tmp/ has a similar purpose, but must not be deleted during reboot. It is not guaranteed that /tmp/ or /var/tmp/ are cleaned up on a regular basis.
Anyway, the standard temporary directory in a typical Linux system is /tmp. It is the equivalent of C:\Temp in the sense that it is only the default temporary directory, not universal. Even if /tmp is available, if a user (or the system) has set the TEMP environment variable, the value of that variable should be used instead.
/tmp is a common directory for temporary files in Unix also using the environment variable TMPDIR From memory (when I used this in mid '80s) TEMP was the original one used in DOS and TMP tended to be used by programs that were ported from Unix to match the /tmp.
This can happen if they crash. I need to delete these orphaned tmp files or else future process will run out of space on /tmp. How can I safely garbage collect /tmp? Some people do it by checking last modification timestamp, but this approach is unsafe because there can be long-running processes that still need those files.
But I have never seen a tmp file in task manager, i'd like to know by what mechanism that can happen. And if I can tell what program launched it there 'cos I wouldn't have managed to run a file of tmp extension, as executable, manually!
The .tmp.drivedownload folder is from Google Backup and Sync. It is a hidden folder that appears at the root of your Google Drive folder as a temporary download space for new items that need to be synced and moved into place.
There is some program running that is creating .tmp files in my \Windows\Temp folder and filling up the hard drive. How can I determine what program is doing that?
