Curious About Three Root Level Files

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Level 2

170 points

Curious About Three Root Level Files

I have three visible files that appear in the root level of my HD, and I'm just curious as to their purpose and what app they belong to.

manual.auto

mds-crash-state

Save/

mds-crash-state presumably belongs to Spotlight, and one would expect it's a crash log, but it isn't readable by Console. As for the other two, I have no idea what they belong to, or what their purpose may be. They all have pretty old creation dates.

-rw-r--r-- 1 rick admin 2402 May 16 2010 manual.auto

-rw----rw- 1 root admin 25 Dec 26 2006 mds-crash-state

-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 0 Apr 14 2008 Save:

Anyone able to satisfy my curiosity?

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Matching white Peterbilt 387

Posted on Apr 22, 2012 10:53 AM

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Answer 1

softwater

Level 5

5,556 points

Apr 22, 2012 12:17 PM in response to sudont

'Save' appears to be empty, so just delete it with 'sudo rm'.

manual.auto has a bit of data in it. You can try inspecting it with this command/argument in Terminal:

emacs manual.auto

Likewise with mds-crash-state, though it doesn't appear to contain much data either.

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Answer 2

sudont Author

Level 2

170 points

Apr 22, 2012 5:18 PM in response to softwater

Yeah, I had taken a look at it, but it's all code. Nothing to indicate its provenance. I'm just wondering where they came from.

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Answer 3

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

Apr 22, 2012 6:54 PM in response to sudont

Here's what I think those files are:

mds-crash-state

I think spotlight crashed and for some reason stored some (recovery?) info in this file.

manual.auto

I know of two tools that expoolicitly reference a file name "manual.auto". One is OSS 3D, for iTunes (now discontinued). The other is Hear (a more general audio enhancer). Do you or did you use either of these?

Save

Have no idea.

You can safely remove all three.

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Answer 4

sudont Author

Level 2

170 points

Apr 22, 2012 8:08 PM in response to X423424X

I think you're right about manual.auto. I believe I did demo that software at some point. I admit I'm most curious about Save/ because of its peculiar name. You typically can't use a slash in a filename since that indicates a directory. It's also curious that it consists of zero KB. For what purpose would an app create a filename with a slash?

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Answer 5

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

Apr 22, 2012 8:17 PM in response to sudont

Actually, in the finder, you can create a filename which looks like it has a slash in it. That's because the finder changes those explicit slashes to colons (':'). And that is why you cannot create a filename in the finder containing a colon. Try it.

In your initial post your ls of the actual file showed it was named "Save:". Note the colon. That's why it looks like "Save/" when you videw it in the finder.

The thing is empty. Don't worry about it. Just trash it.

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Answer 6

sudont Author

Level 2

170 points

Apr 23, 2012 5:12 PM in response to X423424X

You're right, you can save a file with a slash in it. It seems I tried that in the past, and the Finder changed them to hyphens, but I never tried it except shortly after switching from OS 9 to X.

Hope I didn't give the impression that I was "worried" about these files. I'm just a curious person. In both senses, I guess. ; )

Interestingly, I just noticed another file in my Home directory named #manual.auto# with a creation date of yesterday! That one couldn't be from Hear. It also just contains code.

There is also a manual.auto file in there that I hadn't noticed before, with a creation date that matches the one in my Root directory, (I do most of my navigating via LaunchBar).

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