vte use causes /tmp file writing during text scrolling

I take it back, this happens with gnome-terminal too.

Vaguely related, and probably worthy of a separate bug: if you do have infinite scrolling enabled in Terminator, it'll fill up your /tmp with deleted files that it holds open. Nothing more fun than trying to track down where all your disk space went when du doesn't help.

http://climagic.org/bugreports/libvte-scrollback-written-to-disk.html

Here is an insane patch that fixes the problem. I just did a behavioral replacement of file operations with memory operations. This patch could be seriously improved if I could understand the interaction of "offset" and "newpage" better, and just make this a sensible moving window of memory instead. I ran out of time last night, though.

Hrm, can't link more than one upstream bug, so here:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=631685
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664611

This bug was fixed in the package vte - 1:0.28.2-3ubuntu2

---------------
vte (1:0.28.2-3ubuntu2) precise; urgency=low

  * Add debian/patches/backscroll-stream-mem.patch: provide a memory-based
    scrollback stream backend to avoid hitting disk with terminal contents
    (LP: #778872).
 -- Kees Cook <email address hidden> Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:36:14 -0700

Will this patch be applied to upstream Debian and GNOME vte code?

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 5:00 AM, Launchpad Bug Tracker <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> This bug was fixed in the package vte - 1:0.28.2-3ubuntu2
>
> ---------------
> vte (1:0.28.2-3ubuntu2) precise; urgency=low
>
> * Add debian/patches/backscroll-stream-mem.patch: provide a memory-based
> scrollback stream backend to avoid hitting disk with terminal contents
> (LP: #778872).
> -- Kees Cook <email address hidden> Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:36:14 -0700
>
> ** Changed in: vte (Ubuntu)
> Status: Confirmed => Fix Released
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/778872
>
> Title:
> vte use causes /tmp file writing during text scrolling
>
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> https://bugs.launchpad.net/vte/+bug/778872/+subscriptions
>

Hi, sorry for the noise. I can't see this patch applied to the vte3 package. Should it be? Is there a separate bug to track for that package?

Any update?

up to date VTE:

$ dpkg -l | grep libvte
ii libvte-2.90-9 1:0.32.1-0ubuntu1 Terminal emulator widget for GTK+ 3.0 - runtime files
ii libvte-2.90-common 1:0.32.1-0ubuntu1 Terminal emulator widget for GTK+ 3.0 - common files
ii libvte-common 1:0.28.2-3ubuntu2 Terminal emulator widget for GTK+ 2.x - common files
ii libvte9 1:0.28.2-3ubuntu2 Terminal emulator widget for GTK+ 2.0 - runtime files

but gnome-terminal still has files open in tmp:

$ lsof -p 4528 | grep tmp
gnome-ter 4528 rojer 22u REG 8,1 405615 5636167 /tmp/vteK48ALW (deleted)
gnome-ter 4528 rojer 23u REG 8,1 32000 5636319 /tmp/vte25BKLW (deleted)
gnome-ter 4528 rojer 24u REG 8,1 658384 5636417 /tmp/vteEKABLW (deleted)
gnome-ter 4528 rojer 25u REG 8,1 28752 5636520 /tmp/vteKM0PLW (deleted)
gnome-ter 4528 rojer 26u REG 8,1 7504 5636554 /tmp/vteAGVQLW (deleted)
...

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Some interesting relatively recent discussion at LP: #1430620

Although Ubuntu patched vte years ago, vte2.91 was never patched.

While looking @ Ubuntu 19.10's system monitor
to find what process just hogged 60 gig of ram I noticed
During the 1 week since last reboot
gnome-terminal-server 30mb Memory, Disk Read Total 40.9Tb, Disk Write Total 1.8Tb