Huge Core Dump Files in WordPress Folders
I was surprised to see my WordPress folder sizes increasing and FTP revealed huge ‘Core’ dump files in several folders of my WordPress installation. As they gobbled up my server storage space, I had no idea where these came from and what to do with them.
I found this 38MB core file in the root directory of my WordPress installation
As I looked in subfolders, I found another 46MB core file in wp-admin
As you can see these are large files and occupy huge storage space on our server. Thankfully my hosting by Dreamhost has unlimited storage space, so I need not worry; but if your hosting has limited storage, it could add to lot of extra charges. I downloaded and tried opening these core files with wordpad and a mix of gibberish text and symbols appeared.
Core Dump Files
I looked around for possible solutions and found more WordPress bloggers reporting this issue in the WordPress forums here and here. I learnt that these are called Core Dump files and Wikipedia says “a core dump consists of the recorded state of the working memory of a computer program at a specific time, generally when the program has terminated abnormally (crashed).” Core dumps are often used to diagnose or debug errors in computer programs.
In these forums some people advised you can delete these files and save space after backing up all your files and database. Some advise the core files can be read using GDB, the GNU Project debugger. I am not sure if I should delete these files and maybe you can help.
I understand that these files are hosted on our server to keep a record of useful data when the site crashed on a particular day, but I wonder if any hosting engineer is debugging this data or diagnosing why the server or unstable processes crashed or terminated.
Check your WordPress installation and post a comment if you also have “Core” dump files eating your server storage space. What are you going to do about it?
Thanks for all your useful feedback. It seems something is buggy on the wordpress install that is generating these core dumps.
Obviously no hosting engineer would be interested to look over the code in detail, unless necessary.
Maybe some plugin is acting funny. I will try to find the problem.
Hello, been reading in my reader for awhile but this is my first time commenting.
I think everyone pretty much has it down. It’s doubtful your host will be interested in these files, as well as you. Deleting them should be fine.
However, if you’re at all a bit nervous, I’d say back everything up first. Always good to do.
WordPress on it’s own shouldn’t be dumping a lot of files, I bet it’s a plugin like you suggest.
You may want to try pulling some plugins down after deleting the core file. My guess is you have a poorly written plugin that’s so hosed it causes the core dump(s) … it’s unlikely that WP itself causes those to happen.
core dump files can be safely deleted, they are useful only if you want to debug what happened. Since WP is pretty much well tested before they release any version, it could be some plugin or some theme component causing the crash. you could send it to the WP guys anyway.
I’ve been getting masses of these ever since upgrading WP to the latest version. Could WP be to blame? My host is useless when enquiring, they write to bollock me for going over my disk quota and won’t offer any help or advice to resolve the issue. I’m going to start looking for a new host…