Package: wnpp
Owner: Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>
Severity: wishlist

* Package name : unburden-home-dir
Version : none yet (just a git repo)
Upstream Author : Axel Beckert <beckert@phys.ethz.ch> (me at work :-)
* URL or Web page : http://wiki.phys.ethz.ch/readme/application_cache_files
* License : GPLv2+
Description : Remove or move cache files automatically from user's home

unburden_home_dir is an Xsession hook which allows administrators and
optionally also users to move cache files from browsers, etc. off
their home directory, i.e. on a local harddisk or tmpfs and replace
them with a symbolic link to the new location (e.g. on /tmp/ or
/scratch/) upon login. Optionally the contents of the directories and
files can be removed instead of moved.

This is helpful in at least two cases:

One case are big workstation setups where $HOME is on NFS and all
those caches put an unnecessary burden (hence the name) on the file
server since caching over NFS doesn't have the best performance and
may clog the NFS server unnecessarily, too.

The other case are devices with small disk space but a lot of RAM as
seen often on boxes with flash disks or early netbooks, especially the
EeePC, where configurations with 4GB disk space and 2GB RAM are not
seldom. In this case you want to move off cache files, etc. to some
tmpfs filesystem, e.g. /tmp/.

Regards, Axel
--
,'`. | Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
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