Strange directory inside /root/

[benito]

Anyone knows what is the comet directory inside /root/.cpanel ?


[email protected] [~/.cpanel/comet]# ls -l
total 20
drwx------ 5 root root 4096 Apr 15 23:01 ./
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Apr 15 16:03 ../
drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Apr 15 23:01 channels/
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 Apr 15 23:01 subscriber_channel_positions/
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 Apr 15 23:01 subscriptions/

 

[cPanelTristan]

There appears to be comet scripting (likely related to what is discussed at Comet (programming) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) for certain cPanel functions, mainly related to WHM email area functions. You can always try moving the directory temporarily, then visit WHM > Email > Mail Queue Manager to see if it reforms.

Usually, if you check files inside folders, you'll get an idea what might be happening. Most the cases I read about this indicates that some areas such as mail delivery reports were going to be based on comet scripting (case 32322 is one example). I also see mention of Comet in case 50306 in our changelog at CPanelVersion1132 < AllDocumentation/ChangeLog < TWiki

 

[benito]

Thanks Tristan, 640k + files located there filled up my inodes con / partition. I removed the files and everything looks ok now, the comet directory structore has been regenerated again but with a few files now.

 

[cPanelTristan]

Certainly, although if you have this happen again, please check the files and let us know. We have a reported case (58692) where a very high number of emails in the mail queue manager caused /root/.cpanel/comet to be very large in size and overrun the disk space allotment.

 

[benito]

yes that was what happened, after a spam attack, all files inside /root/.cpanel/comet are files from queue.

 

[hicom]

yes that was what happened, after a spam attack, all files inside /root/.cpanel/comet are files from queue.

We continue to see this happening after clearing the mail queue or lots of spam messages on the server. This is the content of the folder:

1.1M %2fdeliver_messages_mail_queue%2fDldF1Z_e9BCJWze8
1.8M %2fpurge_mail_queue%2fcR9MoXcx1WB5n1bi
2.9M %2fpurge_mail_queue%2ffWYnc9oJ1BD6bX8g
600K %2fpurge_mail_queue%2fjwnhk9Pq7EMGrWgB
3.4M %2fpurge_mail_queue%2fKS53MR6o13ddTZaz
40K %2fpurge_mail_queue%2flmbQl2xiD7NwpUUn
13M %2fpurge_mail_queue%2frpovKScWhykEZoFv
13M %2fpurge_mail_queue%2frvVlGjhHB6wpTWAE
3.2M %2fpurge_mail_queue%2fuo44e542N3nvxvZm
31M %2fpurge_mail_queue%2fWwgr1vYaTqAPfPV4
384K %2fpurge_mail_queue%2fzvwrccsI7H3rYqC4
1.3M %2fremove_messages_mail_queue%2f1jS5EFYNPNZTxatT
76K %2fremove_messages_mail_queue%2fMJvKPoHW2N434kRh
48K %2fremove_messages_mail_queue%2fYqNJkhVAGct5tg3Z

inside: ~/.cpanel/comet/channels

 

[cPanelTristan]

Did you also clear the folder itself? You cannot simply clear the mail queue, since the contents will form and cache for a time period, so just checking if you also cleared the folder contents.

 

[hicom]

Did you also clear the folder itself? You cannot simply clear the mail queue, since the contents will form and cache for a time period, so just checking if you also cleared the folder contents.

Yes, removing these files did recover the lost space.

 

[CitizenK]

You can safely clean up the comet directory by running the following command that will remove all files in this directory that have not been accessed in more than three days.

/usr/local/cpanel/bin/purge_dead_comet_files