When I run Alkaline it suddenly crashes with a Segmentation Fault or a Bus Error message. Then it dumps a core file. What is this? Can I delete the core file?

This is probably an Alkaline bug. If you can consistently reproduce the problem, please file a bug report. Please provide as much detail as possible.

A Segmentation Fault or a Bus Error occurs when the program addresses memory that does not exist, or cannot be written to or read from.

The core file is created together with a Segmentation Fault or a Bus Error. After the file is written, Alkaline is terminated. The core file is a mirror of the memory at the time the error occurred. The magnitude of a core file can get to the size of the memory installed in the computer plus the size of its swap space!

You can limit the size of it by running limit coredumpsize 0 . Now, the core dump will always have size zero, and you will not fill the entire disk with trash when this type of error occurs. A core file is used when debugging a program, it is useless on a released version of Alkaline because all the symbols are stripped. You can remove any core file without hesitation.