Evaluating

    (with-temp-buffer
      (setq default-directory "/no/such/dir")
      (get-free-disk-space "/tmp"))

gets an error

    (file-error "Setting current directory" "no such file or directory" "/no/such/dir")

where I hoped it wouldn't care about default-directory, only the given
directory argument.  Perhaps a let-bind per below.



In GNU Emacs 22.2.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.12.11)
 of 2008-11-10 on raven, modified by Debian
configured using `configure  '--build=i486-linux-gnu' '--host=i486-linux-gnu' '--prefix=/usr' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/lib' '--localstatedir=/var/lib' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes' '--enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs22:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/22.2/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/22.2/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/22.2/leim' '--with-x=yes' '--with-x-toolkit=gtk' '--with-toolkit-scroll-bars' 'build_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'host_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS=-DDEBIAN -g -O2' 'LDFLAGS=-g' 'CPPFLAGS=''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_AU
  locale-coding-system: iso-8859-1
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t