who/what created file?

B

bbzz

I noticed that occasionally an empty file is created in my home directory:

Code: 
-rw-r--r--  1 bbzz  bbzz  0 Jan 26 16:05 0

It is possible that one of scripts I wrote creates it. It never gets filled or anything, just sits there. When I delete it, it gets created again.
My question is, how can I find out what process/program creates it?

Thanks
 
If it reappears in a regular manner it might be a scheduled job - check the cron/periodic tasks. Timestamp of the created file can give you a key which scripts to check.

But then you have to share that script because it's very hard to guess :)

You can use sysutils/fuser or sysutils/lsof from ports to check if the file is currently opened by any process.
 
Is it actually called "0"? If not, then sharing the real name may help someone recognize it.

As mentioned by matoatlantis, I'd look into cron/periodic, as the home directory seems like a weird place to put temporary files and conf files should be easily recognizable from their names alone.
 
I tend to sometimes have that issue with files created as '1', but its usually because I was redirecting STDOUT and STDERR and accidentally forgot the '&', example:

Code: 
./myprog >somelogfile 2>1 (notice the 2>1 instead of 2>&1)

However, adding to what others have said, if its called '0', and based on the timestamp, perhaps check your cron jobs and see if any of those scripts run as your user.

Code: 
crontab -e
 
And in login shell scripts. It happened to me too, use of single/double quotes with variable expansions... ad minchiam. It was in .cshrc in alias postcmd, the file was always created, if it's in an user-defined alias the file is created only when alias is used.
 
Found it. It was one of scripts running with .xinitrc. Parenthesis were at the wrong place so instead of checking "greater than 0", output got redirected to "0".

It was really annoying not to know where it was coming from.

Well, thanks all :)
 
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