hosting account filling with mysterious files

ChicoMendez

hi, i have a reseller account with an american host.

they mailed me a bit ago saying my webspace was all used up
sounded strange considering i did not have any big files
on one of my user accounts in the root directory i found loads of core.xxxx (where xxxx seem to be random numbers) - the files are quite big in size a few mb each
i deleted them and things returned back to normal but the files continued to be created

anyone ever come across this as they have now suspended my account

initially i told them what was happening and i asked them to check it out which they failed to do

could this be a tactic to get me to upgrade (as every time they contact me they insist on upgrading)

phil

core files are from core dumps, which means a program running under your account directory is crashing.

Do you have shell access to your machine? (i.e. via telnet or ssh)

You can stop these core files being created, by setting appropiate ulimits, but you should still find out what's creating them.

If you can get shell access, paste the full output of command 'ps uxwww' and we'll see if there's anything strange running.

Can you also do an ls -l on the core files and see who owns them please?

Phil.

misterq

it sounds like there may be a security issue with one of your script files all right.
I would suspect any php scripts you have running. Particularly popular script/programs (with security holes!)

I would very much doubt it is anything deliberate on the part of your hoster. I mean it would be a pretty dumb tactic.

daymobrew

Use the 'file' command to find the binary that generated the core file.

file $core_filename;