What are core files in the users home directory
 

I'm running mandrake 9.2 not sure if this is specific to this issue but anyways. In my user's home directory /home/draven I have been finding a bunch of "core.xxxx" files the x = a number they don't appear to be sequential and range in size drastically from about 1 meg to 200+ megs. Are these necessary files, or is it safe for me to delete them?

You can delete them, but they're dumps of crashing apps. Used for diagnostics. I think it's a snapshot of what was going on in 'core' (RAM) when an app barfs. You shouldn't be having too many crashing apps, so it may indicate another problem. There's also a way to prevent core dumps when stuff crashes but I've never looked into it and forget what it is. Try googling for it if you're interested.

Use:

ulimit -Sc0

to prevent them from appearing at all. Put it your ~/.bashrc so it runs every time you log in.

It's unsafe to have them kicking around; they can contain passwords and other information that a cracker might be interested in.

Lyle

Thanks for the information.