>| That still deletes legitimate files named core that are not core
>| files. Use "file" to determine if it is a corefile.
>+--->8
>
>Personally, I think anyone who names a non-coredump file `core' is asking
>for it.
Personally, I think anyone creating a system administration level
shell script that deletes all files and/or directories named
"core" is asking for it.
Naming a file "core" may not be the smartest choice of a filename
on systems that have complete idiots as sysadmin's, but it is
a perfectly legitimate filename/dirname, and the linux source
tree illustrates this point, as do other programs/files.
One other point nobody has mentioned is that on many systems,
non-unix filesystems are mounted such as msdos/vfat, floppies,
ntfs, hpfs, nfs, etc...
I just did a filefind, and found a couple dirs named "core" in my
msdos partitions. This stuff is NOT backed up, and would be a
pain to locate again.
Point being that opinions on the naming of files as "core" make
no useful contribution to the problem that people DO infact use
files and dirs with such a name, and may not know anything at ALL
about Unix, or corefiles. User's might be running a Win95 system
served by a Linux Samba server, and decide to name a document
"core" for some project that is being worked on or something. In
this respect, an innocent user is CERTAINLY not "asking for it".
Not in any way. It is the stupid sysadmin who is asking for it.
I'll put my money on it that it would be the sysadmin who loses
his job, rather than the person naming the file "core".
What's more is that someone may have a *legitimate* "core" file
that is in fact a real core file, that they ARE USING, or ARE
WANTING TO ANALYZE with gdb. This could for example be the core
file of a program that cores once every 18 days or so...
Certainly the person isn't going to be very pleased to wait
another 18 days to get another corefile to examine. How then do
you propose to remove THESE core files? Someone has proposed
checking the atime on the file. What if joe programmer is on a
month's holidays? A lot of other what-if's come up too.
The proper solution is to implement the script properly, and
tweak it to a particular site's preferences, perhaps ignoring
/home when scanning.
You certainly cannot expect every computer user to not use "core"
as a filename to make up for the short-sightedness of a retarded
sysadmin. And, Linus/Alan/Donald/whoever was responsible for
naming the directory "core" are certainly not "asking for it".
That is my $0.02
-- Mike A. Harris - Computer Consultant - Linux advocateLinux software galore: http://freshmeat.net
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