/tmp Full Of Folders

Yesterday, I went into Yast to do a YOU update; none of my icons would respond when I clicked on them.

The last thing I remember doing rpm-wise was installing flash9 using smart and running SuSeconfig the day before.

Prior to that, my machine had been online 24/7 for over a week & running with no problems.

I checked out smart & it seemed to work 100%.

I immediately ran "rpm --rebuilddb" to no effect. In smart, I took out the latest Yast updates and reverted to earlier versions. I also did smart "fix all problems". Logged out; logged in to no effect. Rebooted & rats, the nvidia splash came up & I was dumped to runlevel 3. Neither "sax2 -r -m 0=nvidia" or "sax2 -m 0=vesa" would run. I tried the repair option & it fixed 3 files one of which was "pam". I finally got it up using the install DVD, but still had to "startx".

Once back up, I ran SuSEconfig again and this time, it said something in the output about not being able to write to /tmp = my 1st clue. I tried to "ls" the files in /tmp & got something like "Initializer list too long" =second clue.

Long story shortened: I opened /tmp in File Manager Super User Mode which took forever & there were tens of thousands folders like "YaST2-15940-Wye5fy". I selected about 5.000 at a time & sent them to Trash; empty trash & repeat until all but the last one were gone. Ran SuSEconfig; it worked! Reboot; it worked! Tried Yast; it worked!

I can only assume that I had a "runaway" program that caused the problem in the 1st place; no idea what. I have used Yast 3 times since and have only 3 Yast tmp files, so, I feel it's working as it should.

I went ahead and did the YOU updates and it's still working as it should.

Note: I did learn that I cannot use another suse 10.2 install on the same box to look into/repair my Raid0 array as it only sees 2 separate HDDs.

Hope this helps someone down the road...