What are core.xxxxx files?
In the document root of your website you may discover large files named core.xxxxx where xxxxx is a random number. These files are called core dumps and could be useful in investigating problems with your website application.
There are numerous reasons for the generation of these files but the most common ones are:
- A script a part of your website tried to access memory not assigned to it
- A script ended prematurely due to critical errors in its code
- Improper use of the PHP libraries
These files could be quite large and consume a lot of disk space and you can safely delete them. But if they keep generating again it is recommended to inspect the core dumps and the code of your application’s scripts to find and fix the cause.