By default, Redhat 6.2 seems to install tmpwatch in cron.daily, set to delete any files that haven't changed in 10 days. The installation did not warn me about this, and I ended up losing many important files. I think Redhat should ask the user before putting such a destructive command into cron. Why not disable it by default and let the user add it if they really want this functionality? It is better to default to "safe" operation in my humble opinion. The risk of having it disabled by default (unwanted files piling up) seems far less severe than the risk of default-enabled (important files deleted before they can be filed out of /tmp ). Yes, I realize /tmp isn't the best place for important files, but IMHO that does not mean you should arbitrarily decide that they should be deleted every 10 days without informing the user.
we have done this since Red Hat Linux 2.x. I will inform the docs team that this needs to be addressed in the documentation. However, we will continue to ship with tmpwatch on. /tmp is _not_ a good place to store _anything_.