Can I set pig.temp.dir to /user/USERNAME/tmp/pig?
You can also set the pig temp dir from within a Pig script as follows:set pig.temp.dir /user/foo/tmp/pig;For small outputs, I think using the /tmp directory is fine, but for large outputs, I'd recommend users write to their personal directories.
Not a configuration file solution, but you can bake this into the $PIG_HOME/bin/pig script:
PIG_OPTS="$PIG_OPTS -Dpig.temp.dir=/user/`whoami`/tmp/pig"