# PSA: File Manager uploads use both /var and /tmp space
**URL:** https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/psa-file-manager-uploads-use-both-var-and-tmp-space/4736
**Category:** Get Help
**Created:** [February 3, 2026, 8:19pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/psa-file-manager-uploads-use-both-var-and-tmp-space/4736 "2026-02-03T20:19:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@jasonbuechler](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/jasonbuechler)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2026, 8:19pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/psa-file-manager-uploads-use-both-var-and-tmp-space/4736/1 "2026-02-03T20:19:37Z")
I noticed [here](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/increase-file-manager-upload-limit/3652) that Alan warned about making sure **/tmp** had space enough to allow for large file uploads, but I was monitoring df during the upload process for a 1.5 GB file and noticed…
- **/tmp** does temporarily grow, but by 3.0GB instead of the 1.5GB expected
- my **/var** grew by 1.5GB too!
I’m curious if either/both of these are normal, or maybe something I’ve done? And if this is just the way it works, it might be worth warning about in [the doc](https://osc.github.io/ood-documentation/latest/customizations.html#set-upload-limits). _(Update: I noticed this is a known ‘warning’ described at the bottom of [the Files app’s architecture doc](https://osc.github.io/ood-documentation/release-1.1/applications/files.html))_ Even more interested in learning if the `/var` component is controllable!
Before upload starts…
Just before upload completes (highlites were from `watch`)…
No symlinks, btw
```bash
[root@ondemand-dev jtb49]# ls -ld /var /tmp /var/tmp
drwxrwxrwt. 8 root root 4096 Feb 3 13:00 /tmp
drwxr-xr-x. 22 root root 4096 Jan 9 2024 /var
drwxrwxrwt. 7 root root 4096 Jan 12 01:06 /var/tmp
```
---
### Author:  [@jasonbuechler](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/jasonbuechler)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2026, 8:53pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/psa-file-manager-uploads-use-both-var-and-tmp-space/4736/2 "2026-02-11T20:53:13Z")
Just a followup, in case anyone else wanted to examine their instance.
For a while I was confused why I couldn’t find the file that was blowing up /var. I suspected it was in /var/tmp/ondemand-nginx/jtb49 … but a `find . -mmin -1` command wasn’t showing me what I was hunting for.
However, `lsof` did show a “deleted” file that was tied to the upload proc: `/proc/1386416/fd/8 => /var/tmp/ondemand-nginx/jtb49/client_body/0000000001 (deleted)` . Similarly a second proc-owned file is being created in /tmp: `/proc/1795862/fd/10 => /tmp/PassengerTeeInput-1l86ohu (deleted)` . And for completeness, a zip file is created in /tmp named like `/tmp/RackMultipart20260219-1795862-wimnh4.zip` .
I made a simple watch-script to show me how /var and /tmp varied, as well as the handles from the upload process:
```bash
#!/bin/bash
out=/root/ood-up2.txt
while true; do
date '+%s' | tee -a $out
find /proc/[0-9]*/fd -lname '*(deleted)' \
-printf '%p => %l\t' \
-exec stat -Lc '%s' {} \; 2>/dev/null |\
grep jtb49 | tee -a $out
find /tmp -name "Rack*zip" -printf '%p\t%s\n' | tee -a $out
sleep 0.5
done
```
And visualized the parsed data to see I wasn’t imagining things: /var grows by the size of the upload, and /tmp grows approximately double – which makes sense given we see it creating 2 files.
The nginx\_stage.yml could be used to control this, but I thought that that was more of an interactive-apps thing?
```bash
[root@ondemand-dev ~]# grep -B2 var.tmp /etc/ood/config/nginx_stage.yml
# Root location of per-user NGINX tmp dirs
#
#pun_tmp_root: '/var/tmp/ondemand-nginx/%{user}'
```
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2026, 8:53pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/psa-file-manager-uploads-use-both-var-and-tmp-space/4736/3 "2026-08-10T20:53:36Z")
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