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ok to del kcore?
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Posted by: cap

Easy question, but just wanted to be sure before I go deleting anything. I assume a kcore file is the same as a core file and is just wasting space right? So any problems with deleting this file?

Just got TivoNet and while playing around came across this and wanted to be sure.

Thanks!

Posted by: kazymyr

Don't. Here's a quote from a certain mailing list:

"kcore is a pseudo file in that it doesn't exist of disk. It exists only in the systems memory and is infact a dump of the systems memory in a ELF core format.

You typically use it to debug the kernel. Do not worry. It doesn't occupy any space on your disk. This is true of most (perhaps all files) under /proc."

------------------
I/O, I/O, it's off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O

Posted by: pv

quote:
Originally posted by kazymyr:
You typically use it to debug the kernel. Do not worry. It doesn't occupy any space on your disk. This is true of most (perhaps all files) under /proc."

Right! On any unix, deleting anything at all in the /proc directory on down is almost always A Very Bad Thing. You will at best cause a process to crash, and at worst corrupt memory and kernel panic your machine.

In unix, everything is a file, even low level stuff. In the proc directory, the "files" are actually mapped to the malloc arena, open file descriptors, environment variables, and lots of other stuff needed for the care and feeding of each running process. Much of the time, they're just pointing back to something on one of the swap partitions, or maybe to ram itself. So deleting it isn't going to give you back any user hard drive space. And anything not needed in /proc will disappear on its own anyway, at the latest during the next reboot.

Also, in general, it's bad form to delete anything from a unix system (/usr, /var, /dev, /proc, /opt) directory with a "k" in front of another word. This is often a not-so-subtle tip that the file is kernel related. Exceptions exist though; it's generally safe to play in /usr/local, or anywhere you know was added by an application install (i.e., not owned by a system user like root, bin, sys, or adm).

Do a df to find out what drives are in the user space, and work on policing those, carefully. I haven't been in a tivo shell since I got 2.0 in Feburary so I can't check if it even exists, but you might want to check out /var/adm, and see if there's a big honkin' "wtmpx" file in there. When this file exists, just about anything to do with processes starting or stopping gets logged in it (its process accounting related, pointless if you're not billing for computer time), and the file gets huge quickly. Generally, deleting wtmpx and rebooting will clean it up for good, and you'll never see a wtmpx appear again unless you make an empty one. PV

Posted by: cap

Thanks for the replies!
Sounds like I'll just leave that alone then. http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif