Re: /.cache directory

[Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2025 at 1:40 PM <debian-user@howorth.org.uk> wrote:
>
> Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 25, 2025 at 09:29:32PM +0530, Avinash Sonawane wrote:
> > > I noticed that there is a directory named ".cache" at root level. It
> > > seems to be created at the time of installation. What is it?
> >
> > It's one of the XDG standard directories.
> >
> >     https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/
> >
> > > Who has created it?
> >
> > Probably put there as part of user creation but all apps that need to
> > use it will also (re-)create it if you delete it.
>
> I'm confused. It's part of a user's directories, and defaults to
> $HOME/.cache so surely it should be under /root not under / ?
>
> The OP could test it by setting an explict value for $XDG_CACHE_HOME in
> root's environment and seeing if that makes any difference.

I was thinking something similar... Sudo or another program scrubbed
the environment. $HOME became empty, so "$HOME/.cache" became
"/.cache".

> > > Seems to be a bug in some package which has created it...
> >
> > "Everything I don't understand is a bug"

Words of wisdom.

Jeff