core file in root dir

[hypnofonic]

i booted up mandrake and found a file name 'core' in my root directory? the icon is a bomb with a fuse? did something blow up while running or something?

thanks!

[Luthor]

yup - that is left there (or you can setup to not save one) so you can debug, if you want, the offending program... no harm in deleting it if you don't care to debug...



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Luthor St. James
(aka [AcK]BillTheCat)

[irlandes]

Originally posted by hypnofonic:
i booted up mandrake and found a file name 'core' in my root directory? the icon is a bomb with a fuse? did something blow up while running or something?

thanks!

While I am not an expert, that core file is routinely saved under a wide variety of occasions when some sort of error or shutdown occurs. Only the advanced linux users can debug it anyway, so most of us ordinary users simply delete those bomb icons when we see them, especially if we are short on disk space.

[Luke-Skywalker]

Core dumps usually result from segmentation faults and happen to the superuser mostly.

To get rid of the core dump files do this ;

As root, edit your /etc/profile. Look for a line that says something like:
[ "$UID" = "0" ] && ulimit -c 1000000
and change the 1000000 to 0.

[Lorithar]

*peers* and umms.

capping root's ulimit is not really a good idea. It works, but on those occasions when something needs to dump a config, or create an output file, this might NOT be handy. Remember that a lot of things run as root. Some install processes check ulimit as well .. (I know that when I upgraded gcc it checked ulimit for certain steps)