
I had 1751 files open file handles inside of "/var/folders". Want to see just how many file handles are open inside of "/var/folders"? Note: file handles are not the same as files, 2 file handles can point to the same file. We also had a problem that I tracked down to this folder. Either way, you can delete "/var/folders" and reboot whenever you would like without danger of ruining anything.

The confstr man page said the cache will only be deleted with a safe boot and only files older then 3 days are cleaned out of temp. I've read that "/var/folders" is deleted at startup, but that is not true. 10.7 introduced FileVault 2, which encrypted the entire disk. The biggest 2 complaints that I found online about "/var/folders" is that it is either huge, or there is personal information in there, which was a bigger deal with FileVault 1 (10.3 to 10.6), when only the home folder was encrypted. The temp dir can also be found by echoing the TMPDIR variable. var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csvxfm_n000jt7w004fjz/T/ var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csvxfm_n000jt7w004fjz/C/ You can get the user cache and temp directories with the getconf command. This directory is created with access permissions of 0700 and restricted by the umask(2) of the calling process and is a good location for user cache data as it will not be automatically cleaned by the system.įiles in this location will be removed during safe boot. The directory will be created if it does not already exist. Provides the path to the user's cache directory. This directory is created with access permissions of 0700 and restricted by the umask(2) of the calling process and is a good location for temporary files.īy default, files in this location may be cleaned (removed) by the system if they are not accessed in 3 days. The directory will be created it if does not already exist. Provides the path to a user's temporary items directory. The man page for confstr also says the following. There is also mention that the folder naming "randomization" inside of "/var/folders" adds security.

There is a user cache in ~/Library/Caches and the only advantage I can see for "/var/folders" is to have a cache that is not in the home folder, for example, to avoid transfering data over a network when using network homes. It's purpose is to increase security by improving permissions (rwxr-xr-x) over previous temp and cache locations (/Library/Caches and /tmp, which are both rwxrwxrwt). "/var/folders" (or "/private/var/folders") is "per-user temporary files and caches".
#Smbup only works after restart mac os x
Everything discussed is Mac OS X 10.9 unless otherwise noted. So I decided to clobber what I knew and what I could find into this page. All I can find is a lot of forum and discusion boards that talk about it. I can't find any documentation about "/var/folders" online, none at all. DIY Capacitive Stylus for iPad and iPhone.Mounting VirtualBox HFS+ VDI files on OS X.Reading the keychain with a perl script.
