Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> Why don't we put the sort files into /tmp and let the system figure out
> how to get rid of them?
Hard-wiring the assumption that they should be in /tmp would be VASTLY
worse than our current situation. Lots of people run with /tmp its own,
not very large partition. There are also serious security issues on
machines that don't have directory stickybits.
I do not like the way Bruce is doing the find, either, but moving stuff
to /tmp isn't the answer.
One reasonable idea is
cd pg_sorttemp ; rm -f *
which could potentially fail if there are LOTS of dead temp files
(enough to make the expanded rm command overrun your kernel limit on
command length) but if there are that many then you've got serious
problems anyway.
regards, tom lane