Bug 151520 – firefox sets atime of files in /tmp

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED UPSTREAM

[Description Chris Smith 2006-10-15 17:58:43 UTC]

My tmpwatch daily cron job does not clean up /tmp properly, because someone is updating the atime of some, not all, files in /tmp.  At some random time, generally in the afternoon.

ls -ltu /tmp currently starts off
-rw-r--r--  1 csmith  csmith     264600 Oct 15 18:21 noise.raw
-rw-r--r--  1 csmith  csmith      26518 Oct 15 18:21 uu
-rw-r--r--  1 root    root          529 Oct 15 18:21 melv.inf
-rw-------  1 csmith  csmith        419 Oct 15 18:21 Acro000ZX7p8e
-rw-r--r--  1 csmith  csmith    2444712 Oct 15 18:21 newsgroups
-rw-r--r--  1 csmith  csmith      51760 Oct 15 18:21 reg
-rw-r--r--  1 csmith  csmith       2619 Oct 15 18:21 zz

I put in a kernel patch to log the process everytime an atime in /tmp is set.
The culprit is firefox.

Oct 15 18:21:19 foxboro kernel: pid 10505 comm firefox-bin accesses /tmp/Config.local.dist
Oct 15 18:21:19 foxboro kernel: pid 10505 comm firefox-bin accesses /tmp/Acro000safoG8
Oct 15 18:21:19 foxboro kernel: pid 10505 comm firefox-bin accesses /tmp/Acro000safoG8
Oct 15 18:21:19 foxboro kernel: pid 10505 comm firefox-bin accesses /tmp/t
Oct 15 18:21:19 foxboro kernel: pid 10505 comm firefox-bin accesses /tmp/argh

In my .mozilla/firefox/noise.default dir there are many refs to /tmp in downloads.rdf but none, for example, for /tmp/zz, a file that got hit.  Also prefs.js records a user_pref for browser.download.dir being /tmp.  There is no .java dir (I deleted it some time ago.)

emerge --info follows

Portage 2.1.1 (default-linux/x86/2006.1/desktop, gcc-4.1.1, glibc-2.4-r3, 2.6.14-gentoo-r7-w4l-cks i686)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.14-gentoo-r7-w4l-cks i686 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
Gentoo Base System version 1.12.5
Last Sync: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:30:09 +0000
app-admin/eselect-compiler: [Not Present]
dev-java/java-config: 1.2.11-r1
dev-lang/python:     2.3.5-r2, 2.4.3-r4
dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5
dev-util/ccache:     [Not Present]
dev-util/confcache:  [Not Present]
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.17
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.59-r7
sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2
sys-devel/binutils:  2.16.1-r3
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.13-r4
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.22
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.17-r1
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=athlon-xp -fomit-frame-pointer"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/lib/fax /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/bind /var/spool/fax/etc"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=athlon-xp -fomit-frame-pointer"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks metadata-transfer parallel-fetch sandbox sfperms strict userpriv usersandbox"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo http://open-systems.ufl.edu/mirrors/gentoo http://distfiles.gentoo.org"
LINGUAS=""
MAKEOPTS="-j3"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude='/distfiles' --exclude='/local' --exclude='/packages'"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="x86 3dnow 3dnowext X Xaw3d aac alsa bash-completion berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cairo cdr cli cpudetection crypt cups curl dbus dga directfb dlloader doc dri dts dvd dvdr dvdread elibc_glibc emacs encode esd fam firefox flac fortran gif glibc-omitfp gstreamer gtk inntaggedhash input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse ipv6 isdnlog java jpeg kernel_linux libg++ live lzo mad maildir mmx mmxext mp3 mpeg musepack ncurses nptl nptlonly nsplugin nvidia ogg opengl oss pam pcre perl png ppds pppd python qt3 qt4 quicktime readline real reflection rtc samba sasl sdl sensord session snmp sox speex spell spl sse sse2 ssl tcl tcltk tcpd tetex theora tk truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev unicode usb userland_GNU v4l v4l2 video_cards_fbdev video_cards_nvidia video_cards_vesa vorbis win32codecs xanim xml xorg xv xvid xvmc zlib"
Unset:  CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY

[Comment 1 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2006-10-15 18:05:57 UTC]

Sorry, I really don't see what fix you expect from us; we are packaging the thing, we didn't write it. Please, report such stuff upstream. (Plus you didn't even tell us which version, or whether you can reproduce it with firefox-bin or how can we reproduce the problem.)

[Comment 2 Chris Smith 2006-10-16 05:21:15 UTC]

The About string is
 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7)
 Gecko/20060922 Firefox/1.5.0.7

I didn't find a place on mozilla.org to report bugs -- can you tell me roughly where it is?

(I did check here first, there are ~100 firefox bugs in gentoo bugzilla)

On how to reproduce it, I don't know either.  I have turned off java, that may change something.  I don't even know how long it's been happening, it was a while before I noticed it.  I'll see if I can find the PC to print out, and  build a debug version of firefox-bin, might help.

[Comment 3 Jory A. Pratt 2006-10-16 13:35:36 UTC]

bug is invalid this is the expected behavior of upstream. All downloads are to /tmp before they are saved/opened. If you do not agree with this behavior you need to file a bug at http://bugs.mozilla.org.

[Comment 4 Chris Smith 2006-10-16 13:41:08 UTC]

Ok I will pursue this at bugs.mozilla.org, thanks for the address.

This is not about downloaded files, however.  Once a day about 75% of the files in /tmp are accessed by firefox-bin.  Downloads and non-downloads.  Some of them are very old files, but every day they get atimes that make them look recently-accessed.  All at the same time.  I will see if recording the user pc in firefox-bin reveals anything.

I have shut off java, maybe that will help too.

[Comment 5 Chris Smith 2006-10-18 09:47:00 UTC]

FYI this looks like some spying java applet -- trouble vanished when I shut off java and rm'd ~/.java and ~/.mozilla/firefox/someplace/.java.

NOW I wish I had saved them, oh well.

fyi.