Core.xxxx Files In / what are they??

OS：red hat 9.0There are thousands of core.xxxx files were found in the root directory (/) [root@213 /]# ll |moretotal 3082181drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 30 23:45 bindrwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1024 May 30 22:33 boot-rw------- 1 root root 442368 Jun 21 10:52 core.1002-rw------- 1 root root 446464 Jun 21 10:52 core.1003-rw------- 1 root root 438272 Jun 21 10:52 core.1004-rw------- 1 root root 442368 Jun 21 10:52 core.1005-rw------- 1 root root 446464 Jun 21 10:52 core.1007-rw------- 1 root root 442368 Jun 21 10:52 core.1010-rw------- 1 root root 446464 Jun 21 10:52 core.1011-rw------- 1 root root 438272 Jun 21 10:52 core.1012-rw------- 1 root root 442368 Jun 21 10:52 core.1013-rw------- 1 root root 446464 Jun 21 10:52 core.1015-rw------- 1 root root 442368 Jun 21 10:52 core.1018-rw------- 1 root root 446464 Jun 21 10:52 core.1019-rw------- 1 root root 438272 Jun 21 10:52 core.1020-rw------- 1 root root 442368 Jun 21 10:52 core.1021-rw------- 1 root root 446464 Jun 21 10:52 core.1023-rw------- 1 root root 442368 Jun 21 10:52 core.1026-rw------- 1 root root 446464 Jun 21 10:52 core.1027-rw------- 1 root root 438272 Jun 21 10:52 core.1028-rw------- 1 root root 442368 Jun 21 10:52 core.1029-rw------- 1 root root 442368 Jun 21 10:52 core.1033-rw------- 1 root root 446464 Jun 21 10:52 core.1034-rw------- 1 root root 438272 Jun 21 10:52 core.1035-rw------- 1 root root 446464 Jun 21 10:52 core.1036-rw------- 1 root root 442368 Jun 21 10:52 core.1037-rw------- 1 root root 446464 Jun 21 10:52 core.1041-rw------- 1 root root 438272 Jun 21 10:52 core.1042-rw------- 1 root root 446464 Jun 21 10:52 core.1043-rw------- 1 root root 442368 Jun 21 10:52 core.1044-rw------- 1 root root 442368 Jun 21 10:52 core.1045What are these files for??Can i delete them??

Sure you can delete them as long as you aren't using them, but if you do it could wreck your system, you might want to find out what they are for, if they are just temporary install files it shouldn't hurt anything but it looks like Linux files and I don't know that much about Linux.

Hehe - tell me what do you do with you system. Those core files are generated only when you seemingly do the impossible - i.e. crash linux programs a whole lot..

Core files are memory dumps containing traces of stack/heap and other memory segments + system registers. Usually when some application or process crashes - it generates one of those core dump files - numbered with whatever it can find next in the sequence. The most common way to generate a core dump is to run some app in one virtual console and then from another console use KILL to terminate it. Try that with your X-Server Quite often that app would exit leaving behind a core dump file. A hardcore coder armed with suitable debuggers might be able to take a peek into them and figure out what caused the crash, by tracing through those values (trying to simulate the exact conditions in general)... A normal user wouldn't have any use for them...

Just get rid of all of them - do a rm -f core.*

But am still interested to know how you managed to generate so many core dumps ?? I use linux quite extensively - and I fool around with the system even more ending up trashing it every so often - but even then, I rarely manage to generate more than a couple of core dumps... lol.. how did u get so many all with the same timestamp ?

Regards,

m^e

Thanks you for your help.I could not remember what I have done to my system...>_<I just found there there those files in the root directory.It looks more clean and clear after rm core.* -f