Increasing the size of tmpDSK and /tmp in a CPanel Environment

I recently ran into an issue in cPanel after recompiling Apache with some new settings. I enabled the eAccelerator extension in my EasyApache configuration for PHP. Now cPanel uses a default size for its /tmp mount of 512mb. I found out rather quickly that this isn’t enough for eAccelerator. I actually ended up resetting this value to 4096mb (4GB). As a reminder to myself and so anyone else looking for the solution to this problem, I will outline what needs to be done below.

First, ssh into your server and login as root or su – root after logging in as a regular user. Now use the power of the command line. Don’t panic!

Stop Apache, MySQL, and cPanel

1
2
3
service httpd stop
service mysql stop
service cpanel stop

Next unmount the existing /tmp

1
umount -l /tmp

Remove /usr/tmpDSK

1
rm -rf /usr/tmpDSK

Next, use your favorite editor (Vim in this example) to change the config file for the tmpDSK

1
vim /scripts/securetmp

Search the file for “tmpdsksize” (in Vim type /tmpdsksize and hit enter). The line should look like this by default:

1
my $tmpdsksize     = 512000;    # Must be larger than 250000

Change the 512000 to a higher number in Kilobytes. For my 4GB, I changed it to 4096000.
Save the file (vim :wq enter).
Run the script…

1
/scripts/securetmp

Answer y to the two questions it asks.
Finally start your services back up.

1
2
3
service httpd start
service mysql start
service cpanel start

That should have you set with more /tmp space.