~/tmp folder oversized

kedarp · 02-25-2014, 09:58 AM

I have this tmp folder in the home directory that supposedly stores temporary files. But it has
consumed upto 4 GB of my disk space.

On going inside it, I found that there is a folder kde-kedar that has taken up all the space.
It contains many files with names like dolphinS1143.tmp which are hundreds MB large in size.

I need to free up this disk space. Any idea on what these files are? Can I delete them?

szboardstretcher · 02-25-2014, 10:06 AM

well its hard to know what the outcome will be.

on MY system, if I run into a space issue and need to clean up cache/tmp files, I will move them out to somewhere and restart. if everything is ok, i delete them. if not, i move them back.

TobiSGD · 02-25-2014, 01:43 PM

If they are in /tmp it should be safe to delete them, especially if you go to runlevel 1 (or the equivalent systemd target for your distribution) before doing so.
FWIW, I added this line to the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local_shutdown (may be in a different location on distributions other than Slackware) on all my systems that have /tmp on a disk:

Code:

rm -rf /tmp/*

This way when you shut down or reboot the system /tmp gets automatically cleaned.

Mr. Alex · 02-26-2014, 12:43 PM

I don't think I can recall any case when deleting a *.tmp file hurt the system.

kedarp · 02-26-2014, 01:05 PM

I just deleted the files, since I had no other option. Cleaned up upto 4 GB of space. But I was wondering
what was the purpose of creating such big files and what created them.

szboardstretcher · 02-26-2014, 01:11 PM

Probably dolphin file manager making index/cache files,. which can get huge quick.

Open one up next time to see what it is. You can use 'strings' to pull out readable characters if you wish.