I thought I would just quote the manual to see if it makes sense to follow it (pages 35-36):

Any directory tree which a user has write permissions to, such as e.g. /home, /tmp
and /var/tmp/, should be on a separate partition. This reduces the risk of a user DoS
by filling up your “/” mount point and rendering the system unusable (Note: this is
not strictly true, since there is always some space reserved for root which a normal user
cannot fill), and it also prevents hardlink attacks.
 
A very good example of this kind of attacks using /tmp is detailed in The mysteriously persistently exploitable program (contest) (http://www.hackinglinuxexposed.com/articles/20031111.html) and The myste-
riously persistently exploitable program explained (http://www.hackinglinuxexposed.com/articles/
20031214.html) (notice that the incident is Debian-related). It is basicly an attack in which a local user stashes
away a vulnerable setuid application by making a hard link to it, effectively avoiding any updates (or removal)
of the binary itself made by the system administrator. Dpkg was recently fixed to prevent this (see 225692
(http://bugs.debian.org/225692)) but other setuid binaries (not controlled by the package manager) are
at risk if partitions are not setup correctly.

Mark

On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 7:49 AM, Austin Godber <godber@uberhip.com> wrote:
I have occasionally found it handy to have /tmp on a separate
partition.  Mainly to ensure that /tmp doesn't fill up accidentally
which can lead to all sorts of unpleasantness and complicate recovery.

Same applies pretty much across the board and bi directionally.

Though separating out partitions of course comes with slightly increased
complexity.

Austin

James Finstrom wrote:
> This was discussed a week or so ago (sorta). Generaly you want to keep
> home on it's own partition. Never seen the rest but could see some
> logic with var and opt not really tmp
>
> On 4/27/09, Mark Phillips <mark@phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:
>
>> I am setting up a new server for Plone/Zope sites on a Linode VPS. Reading
>> the "Securing Debian Manual" (
>> http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/), it recommends
>> separate partitions for /tmp, /home, /opt, and /var. I was talking with some
>> of the Linode folks on IRC to find out how to set up separate partitions,
>> and they felt that it was unnecessary to have separate partitions for a
>> production server (regardless if it is on Linode or not).
>>
>> I am interested in any opinions on the subject from this list.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Mark
>>
>>
>
>

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