Vivaldi started creating dozens of directories in /tmp/

0001

Ever since a few weeks ago, Vivaldi has started creating several directories a day in /tmp/ of the form "..com.vivaldi.Vivaldi.[0-9A-Za-z]{6}/", with each directory containing exactly one file of the form "[0-9a-f]{64}.puff". The ".puff" files range between 2K and 6K, and contain (other than the magic number) "gibberish" (I assume encrypted content). These files never get deleted, and soon dominate the directory in terms of number.

Questions:

What do these files contain (I have searched, and found very little information about them)?
Why do they need to get written to the disk (as opposed to remaining in memory)?
Does some way exist to reduce their number (or at least put multiple ones in one directory)? I don't understand why Vivaldi needs to create so many directories in /tmp/.

DoctorG

@0001 I do not see such files with Vivaldi 6.4.3160.47 on my Debian 12 KDE.

Which Vivaldi version?
Which Linux and Desktop?

You do not let clear the /tmp folder regularly by a Linux setting or cron job?
Check /etc/default/rcS for value TMPTIME.
Check systemctl status systemd-tmpfiles-clean

0001

@DoctorG said in Vivaldi started creating dozens of directories in /tmp/:

@0001 I do not see such files with Vivaldi 6.4.3160.47 on my Debian 12 KDE.

Which Vivaldi version?

I currently have 6.4.3160.44.

Which Linux and Desktop?

Custom with the Lumina Desktop Environment.

You do not let clear the /tmp folder regularly by a Linux setting or cron job?

No, I don't. I keep things that I work on or test there, and I never want anything deleted from /tmp/ unless I do it myself (or the program that creates a file deletes it).

Check /etc/default/rcS for value TMPTIME.

Don't have that file.

Check systemctl status systemd-tmpfiles-clean

Don't use (UGH!) systemd.

DoctorG

@0001 Sorry, i can not help you with BSD Linux.

DoctorG

@0001 said in Vivaldi started creating dozens of directories in /tmp/:

Vivaldi has started creating several directories a day in /tmp/ of the form "..com.vivaldi.Vivaldi.[0-9A-Za-z]{6}/"

And what is wrong if you to create a cron job which delete these at next system start?

Or do you want to report that folder pollution as a bug? Then report issue to Vivaldi bug tracker. Once that is done, share the bug number (beginning with VB-) you got by bug report mail. Thanks for helping us making Vivaldi better.

DoctorG

@0001 I checked my 6.4.3160.47 on Ubuntu and i can see that exiting Vivaldi does delete these ..com.vivaldi.Vivaldi.. folders.
If you have some, that could be remaining orphaned data from crashes processes.

Pathduck

This happens on Windows as well, folder are created named:
chrome_BITS_9968_1449837991

With a file:
c41b19fa9cd49facc19c2b6876130542f241298e5ca2ca6d3a4c719621839d0f.puff

The name indicates the Windows BITS service is involved in downloading files. Doing a search for this folder finds a lot of references to Chrome users having the same "issue":
https://www.google.com/search?q="chrome_bits"

Searching for the "magic" PUF1 header finds a very technical article about something called "Puffin: A deterministic deflate re-compressor (for patching purposes)"
https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:third_party/puffin/

Looks like downloaded diffs related to component updater and/or browser delta updates.

So are Chromium developers lazy for not deleting the files they create in TEMP, or is this just a minor nuisance and TEMP should be cleared once in a while automatically anyway. Probably a bit of both, and these are not big files/dirs, comes to about 78kB here.

npro

@0001 said in Vivaldi started creating dozens of directories in /tmp/:

Why do they need to get written to the disk (as opposed to remaining in memory)?

Is there a particular reason behind not having mounted /tmp as a tmpfs?

0001

@DoctorG said in Vivaldi started creating dozens of directories in /tmp/:

@0001 Sorry, i can not help you with BSD Linux.

I do not use BSD, and BSD does not equal Linux.

@DoctorG said in Vivaldi started creating dozens of directories in /tmp/:

And what is wrong if you to create a cron job which delete these at next system start?

I could do that, but it hardly solves the problem. I recently rebooted after a 150+ day uptime, so the /tmp/ directory would (without me occasionally removing them due to the annoyance) end up with hundreds of those directories and files.

Or do you want to report that folder pollution as a bug? Then report issue to Vivaldi bug tracker. Once that is done, share the bug number (beginning with VB-) you got by bug report mail. Thanks for helping us making Vivaldi better.

I have reported it, and will update any information here.

@Pathduck said in Vivaldi started creating dozens of directories in /tmp/:

This happens on Windows as well, folder are created named:
chrome_BITS_9968_1449837991

With a file:
c41b19fa9cd49facc19c2b6876130542f241298e5ca2ca6d3a4c719621839d0f.puff

That certainly sounds like the same thing.

So are Chromium developers lazy for not deleting the files they create in TEMP, or is this just a minor nuisance and TEMP should be cleared once in a while automatically anyway. Probably a bit of both, and these are not big files/dirs, comes to about 78kB here.

Two things here:

No way (that I know of) exists to tell the user that Vivaldi (or Chromium) still "needs" those files.
These files get downloaded PER USER - yes, this machine has multiple users running Vivaldi (some remotely) simultaneously. Each user eventually gets identical files (in different directories, of course)

@npro said in Vivaldi started creating dozens of directories in /tmp/:

Is there a particular reason behind not having mounted /tmp as a tmpfs?

I have never seen that, but a little checking shows that some variants of Unix actually do that. I find that idea of using precious RAM for /tmp/ completely unappealing. Right now, I have five AppImages running (meaning mounted in /tmp/) each consuming about 500 MB of disk space. I certainly don't want all of those files (or even ANY of those files) in RAM!

DoctorG

@0001 When such files pollute your /tmp and are not deleted after they are not used anymore by Vivaldi after Vivaldi exited, i would call that a Vivaldi bug and possibly Chromium bug.

I hate app creating folders and files which are not used anymore and does not tidy up!

Bug is on Windows an Linuxes

VB-102268 "Vivaldi has started to create several directories a day in /tmp (and never deletes them)" - Confirmed.

DoctorG

Bug VB-102268 was closed, was fixed by Chromium developers (Upstream) for Chromium 120.

A Linux workaround was for me: Cronjob which delete older files in /tmp.

xoores

I still get those .puff files in Linux (Vivaldi 6.6.3271.44).

Is there any way to constrain Vivaldi to create such files in (for example) XDG_RUNTIME_DIR or similar instead of polluting random folders on my system as it sees fit?

DoctorG

@xoores I thought that was fixed by upstream from Chromium.
Had you tried with 6.6.3271.57?

xoores

@DoctorG Will try to upgrade and test again

0001

UGH! This issue has returned (minus the .puff files - Vivaldi either just creates empty directories, or creates directories, uses them, and then removes the files from them without deleting the directories) a couple of months ago.

On a machine with an up-to-date Vivaldi (my other machine still uses 6.6.3271.61, since no later version can connect to my Ledger hardware wallet), the problem has existed in all versions beginning with 7, including 7.2.3621.67, the version currently installed.

npro

Can't confirm on Arch Linux with Vivaldi 7.3.3635.4. 7.2 is not supported anymore anyway. Maybe a FreeBSD Linux compatibility layer thing again.