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I find a lot of files with names of the like

.goutputstream-xxxxx

where xxxxx are some alphanumeric characters.

Here is a screenshot of the home folder

screenshot of home folder

Any idea why I should keep these or can I remove and also stop further creation?

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3

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
58

This is a bug - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lightdm/+bug/984785

Pretty sure it's not ubuntu one - I don't have it here and have the files.

I delete them every now and again, not caused me any issues.

You can run this command in a terminal to delete them all: 

cd && rm .goutputstream-* -v
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  • I believe, those files are related with gstreamer or pulseaudio.
    – Anwar
    Jul 25, 2012 at 15:15
7

These are temporary files that should have been deleted. Most likely created by Ubuntu One.

This issue has been discussed to detail on this forum:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11953534

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  • @ObsessiveFOSS The first sentence of this answer really does fundamentally answer the question (or attempt to, I'm not saying this is right). And it is the essential information from the linked thread. I'm not sure this particular answer actually does require any additional details.
    – Eliah Kagan
    Jul 25, 2012 at 16:06
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    I do not use Ubuntu One and still get these files.
    – To Do
    Feb 6, 2013 at 16:21
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A fix is still in the works (via the bug report):

upstream commited a fix to git if somebody wants to try the change: http://git.gnome.org/browse/glib/commit/?id=afdb2abb13896a3d5caecabd2f7158e8047f9956

For now, I'm running this in cron (myuser is my username, and using crontab -e to edit ) :

@daily find /home/myuser/.goutputstream-* -mtime +2 -print | xargs rm -f

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  • 1
    Would I just add the above cron job into a crontab exactly as you have written it? If so, where do I save it when prompted by nano?
    – Shawn
    Mar 20, 2013 at 1:53
  • If you use crontab -e, the default location should be correctly selected already.
    – belacqua
    Mar 20, 2013 at 22:47
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    Just use -delete instead of your xargs, it is safer and simpler.
    – Martin Ueding
    Apr 15, 2013 at 17:32
  • @queueoverflow I assume that works as long as you're using GNU find.
    – belacqua
    Apr 16, 2013 at 21:30
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I don't know if it is because of a kernel update, or what have you but I was able to accomplish the same result as:

cd && rm .goutputstream-* -v

by running:

rm .goutputstream-*
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3
  • 10
    The former goes to the home directory cd, deletes all .goutputstream-* files and gives you a list of the files deleted. The latter deletes all .goutputstream-* files in the current directory. So your solution won't work if the user isn't already in the home directory.
    – Zaz
    Dec 14, 2012 at 13:08
  • Well, it will work, it just won't delete the .goutputstream-* files that may be in the home directory. If there had been any such files in that current directory, they would have been deleted.
    – icedwater
    Jan 5, 2014 at 8:51
  • Nothing to do with any kernel.
    – Ken Sharp
    Jul 30, 2015 at 18:52

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