phplinuxtmp

What are all these phpXXXXXX files in /tmp

The /tmp folder on a PHP server keeps filling up with files like these

-rw-------  1 user 5242880 Mar 16 04:32 php3FruGk
-rw-------  1 user 5242880 Mar 16 04:32 php4CsNMh
-rw-------  1 user 5242880 Mar 16 04:32 php4iEwia
-rw-------  1 user 5242880 Mar 16 04:32 php4NpfIo
-rw-------  1 user 5242880 Mar 16 04:32 php7PUmhu

What creates those? It just started happening last week, and the server has issues when /tmp is full. They contain unfamiliar text. What type of encoding is this?

«¾^O"ô<96><83>³E¨<9d>^X$^[,^[Si<8c>¤vB϶<8c>t2_%&)ü<9d>&<9e><8f><93>sª<88>sâZ.Ö<84>!¯^Dx³^M+<87>dÛÖ^VºV^AY<97>Ùp
Solution

  • It turned out that a cron backup job was coinciding with these files being created. I cleared out some large tables, and the problem stopped.