dracut will assemble its initramfs content in a temporary directory somewhere under /var/tmp. The FHS states that /var/tmp is for data which should be preserved over reboots (see URL field above), whereas /tmp need not be preserved. On modern systems, /tmp is likely to be a tmpfs, whereas /var/tmp still needs to be written to disk. As there is little point in preserving temporary dracut trees over reboots, /tmp would be the better place to store such things. Assembling stuff in ram should be considerably faster. <rant> I realize that an increasing number of developers no longer care about established standards like FHS. The latest developments with udev requiring /usr are a clear indication of this. But I still hope that you will still fix this, unless there is some good reason not to. </rant>
Patch ready, sent upstream. Thanks.
Upstream ML post: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.initramfs/2564
I have added tmpdir option instead of changing it to /tmp, because "/tmp is for small files only" as upstream says and this directory might be quite huge in some cases. Patch with tmpdir option is applied by upstream and I have added it in dracut-017-r2.
And thanks for the report! I use /tmp on my system, now. :-)
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.initramfs/2567
Ups, this one: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.initramfs/2565
