CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cachingjoomlajoomla3.0
user2493235
user2493235

Reputation:

Joomla 3's /cache/ Folder

I recently upgraded a website to Joomla 3.6.4. Since that upgrade was carried out, a file keeps appearing in the root level "/cache/" folder. The file name is along the lines of:

a678b324f82349cd789ef3789fe32890-cache--b4324ec6789ac678632ef789cab32467.php

(I replaced the characters with random other ones in the same hex range, in case these are security sensitive)

And the contents:

<?php die("Access Denied"); ?>#x#a:2:{s:6:"output";s:0:"";s:6:"result";b:1;}

Can someone please tell me what this file is for? I have looked round the admin and done some Googling, looked at the Joomla site, but can't find anything to explain what this file is for. Which part of the Joomla system is this file being created by? Can it be switched off?

If I delete it, it is recreated soon after. I can do more investigation, but hoping someone can point me in the right direction to understand what is going on.

Background info: For security, I keep a close watch on any new files created through Joomla, hence the scrutiny. If they need to stay, I need to work out how to allow them to do that without triggering alarms when they are created.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 741

Answers (1)

Sven Bluege
Sven Bluege

Reputation: 1468

This file is a simply serialized cached object. Instead of executing expensive operations over and over again one can cache the results and load them for a specific amount of time. This speeds up the end user response time. The name of the cached file is a hash based on the values which are responsible to create the object.

This page explains some things about this kind of caching in Joomla! https://docs.joomla.org/Using_caching_to_speed_up_your_code

Every Joomla! extension can leverage this kind of caching. The content in your file does not tell very much about it source so it's hard to say who created it. But if you check the source code for something like cache->call you might find some places where this happens.

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions