$HOME/.Nooooooo!

[Tony Linde]

Thanks for that, Mark.

> use/abuse of a user's home directory is not much related to PLASTIC -

No. that's why I started a new topic.

> JVM (e.g. java -Djava.io.tmpdir=/disk/scratch) if required.
> "java -Duser.home=/tmp/$USER -jar app.jar".

Anyone know if it is possible to set these up in Webstart so webstarted apps
use the place?

Wonder what java.io.tmpdir normally returns in Windows?

T.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Taylor [mailto:mbt at star.bris.ac.uk] On Behalf Of 
> Mark Taylor
> Sent: 13 February 2007 15:24
> To: Tony Linde
> Subject: Re: $HOME/.Nooooooo!
> 
> On Tue, 13 Feb 2007, Tony Linde wrote:
> 
> > I'll raise this again as a separate topic.
> >
> > We're getting problems with (plastic) apps using .Xxxx 
> directories to store 
> > temporary files.
> >
> > Doing a demo the other day on a (WinXP) machine configured 
> by the department 
> > (and so not changeable) we kept getting 'profile storage 
> space exceeded' 
> > messages from the OS. This because all the apps were using 
> $HOME/.xxx 
> > directories as scratch space: this area in Windows is for 
> user profile 
> > information not general storage. We need some way that 
> users can point to 
> > some other 'home' directory for AR/PLASTIC apps.
> >
> > The main offender was Aladin because it stored a couple of 
> VOTable files in 
> > the $HOME/.aladin directory.
> >
> > Can I ask that anyone writing an application which might be 
> run under windows 
> > *not* store anything in the $HOME/.xxx type of directory. 
> Temporary files 
> > should go in the Temp directory and application profiles in a 
> > $HOME/Application Data/xxx directory.
> >
> > I see that gaim, firefox, thunderbird etc all do this 
> correctly - can someone 
> > look up how they handle it and place the advice up here?
> 
> Tony and other interested parties,
> 
> use/abuse of a user's home directory is not much related to PLASTIC -
> as John said, there is a $HOME/.plastic file, but it's only a 
> couple of lines long.
> 
> For java applications, the normal place to store temporary files
> is in the directory given by the system property "java.io.tmpdir" - 
> this is typically /tmp on Unix, but may be set when invoking the
> JVM (e.g. java -Djava.io.tmpdir=/disk/scratch) if required.
> 
> If a java application is writing to a user's home directory
> (and Aladin may have had its reasons for doing this) it is very likely
> doing so by examining (directly or indirectly) the system property 
> "user.home".  You could change this behaviour by redefining that 
> system property when java is invoked, e.g. 
> "java -Duser.home=/tmp/$USER -jar app.jar".
> 
> Non-java applications will mostly have OS-specific approaches to 
> these issues.
> 
> Mark
> 
> -- 
> Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol 
> University, UK
> m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 
> http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/
>