What is a purpose of big file with strange name in home/[username] directory?

Question

In my user home directory I have a file named:

tmp1HUvJk WglW1PwW_XpIMt9TjXEQlg_j_RFl2FAc2Dwk-.vwYAjVaOcbRikPg5_BjfAevak9jdzmZSnIj6l5HkjAZ5cmA94pMRso1biw19qyrZ8jhkW5pG9KxjSI vC QK2qS5Mbt-4H3za0OVLRCgUurAwZjfGh1gLoNJ06AnrHGEa6FMGSvq4XzlMyQYx7k.6FkGqL-e1 TWhWFjF2SggniWkaln57EhuBiMI2HuVwIj.CHzaRJcgKLwqZ

The file size is 13GB

What is the purpose of this file?

looks like garbage to me! :) you can run file on it to see if it might contain anything useful. also: od -c tmp1H* | head to see if you recognize anything in it. — Jeff Schaller, Oct 20 '15 at 14:21
The file is a temporary file made by a process that you ran. Does this file actually have newlines in the file name? — fd0, Oct 20 '15 at 14:21
@fd0, a 13 GiB temporary file is very strange. I'd check if the filesystem is somehow corrupt (fsck(8) or such). — vonbrand, Oct 20 '15 at 17:25
Is that the actual file name or did you omit some unprintable characters? Having only letters, a few punctuation signs, and newlines is a strange combination. Is the file still open? lsof /path/to/file — Gilles 'SO- stop being evil', Oct 20 '15 at 21:12
My best guess is that it's broken output from someone trying to create random data in a temporary file (the prefix of "tmp" is suspicious). — Jeff Schaller, Oct 21 '15 at 17:18

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 22 '15 at 23:25

0

Based on the information from the comments, I'm going to guess that the file is useless. Try renaming it for a period of time and see if anything breaks that you care about. mv tmp1HUvJk* delete_me. If nothing breaks, then remove it altogether-- rm delete_me.

answered Oct 22 '15 at 23:25

Jeff Schaller

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Done it. Seems to be ok and file wasn't created. – Codium Oct 23 '15 at 16:13

What is a purpose of big file with strange name in home/[username] directory?

1 Answers1