Is it possible to delete files in the /tmp directory once a certain directory size is exceeded?

Question

According to How is the /tmp directory cleaned up?, the /tmp directory is cleaned up using tmpreaper, which uses cron to schedule cleanups at fixed time intervals. However, I would instead like to enforce a certain maximum size of the tmp directory. Is this possible?

Answer 1

You could write a little script:

#
#      your maximum size of /tmp in kbytes
#
maxsize=1000
#
#      now get the actual size of /tmp in kbytes
#
tmpsize=$(du -ks /tmp|cut -f 1)
#
#      when maximum reached, clean up
#
if [ $tmpsize -ge $maxsize ]; then
    rm -r /tmp/*
fi

This should be run as root, in order to clean up files owned by other users (including root) as well.