Recently I've been doing some maintenance on a cloud-hosted server I run. My host is DreamHost, specifically their DreamCompute service and the server is running Debian 8.6.While cleaning up old files, I found a rather suspicious file located in / called EMPTY with a size of 3.3 GB.<ME>@<SERVER> / % ls -alhtotal 3.3Gdrwxr-xr-x  22 root root 4.0K Sep 23 11:31 .drwxr-xr-x  22 root root 4.0K Sep 23 11:31 ..drwxrwxr-x   2 root root 4.0K Sep 23 11:20 bindrwxr-xr-x   3 root root 4.0K Sep 23 11:20 boot-rw-r--r--   1 root root   30 Aug 24 08:30 configdrwxr-xr-x  18 root root 3.0K Sep 23 11:31 dev-rw-r--r--   1 root root 3.3G Mar 16  2016 EMPTY <--- ???drwxr-xr-x 112 root root 4.0K Sep 23 15:15 etcdrwxr-xr-x   8 root root 4.0K Jun  8 10:50 homelrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   36 Apr 11 13:37 initrd.img -> /boot/initrd.img-4.4.0-0.bpo.1-amd64lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   36 Mar 16  2016 initrd.img.old -> /boot/initrd.img-4.3.0-0.bpo.1-amd64drwxr-xr-x  15 root root 4.0K Mar 16  2016 libdrwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4.0K Sep 23 11:20 lib64drwx------   2 root root  16K Mar 16  2016 lost+founddrwxr-xr-x   3 root root 4.0K Mar 16  2016 mediadrwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4.0K Mar 16  2016 mntdrwxr-xr-x   6 root root 4.0K Jun 29 09:59 optdr-xr-xr-x 157 root root    0 Sep 23 11:31 procdrwx------  11 root root 4.0K Sep 23 21:18 rootdrwxr-xr-x  24 root root  820 Sep 24 06:25 rundrwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4.0K Sep 23 11:20 sbindrwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4.0K Mar 16  2016 srvdr-xr-xr-x  13 root root    0 Sep 26 16:52 sysdrwxrwxrwt  13 root root 4.0K Sep 26 16:51 tmpdrwxr-xr-x  11 root root 4.0K Apr 16 09:38 usrdrwxr-xr-x  12 root root 4.0K Jun  9 09:26 varlrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   32 Apr 11 13:37 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-0.bpo.1-amd64lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   32 Mar 16  2016 vmlinuz.old -> boot/vmlinuz-4.3.0-0.bpo.1-amd64I attempted to use sed -n '/\S/ p' < EMPTY to check if the file really was empty of everything except whitespace and it didn't print any output. I then did sed '/\S/ p' < EMPTY && echo $? to make sure the command didn't crash part way through and it returned 0.I just want to confirm, though. Is this file safe to delete?
Debian 8.6 - Large file at root called EMPTY
debian;files;virtual machine;disk cleanup;safety
It should be safe to delete. I wouldn't delete it immediately though, I would compress it  it should compress very well indeed:gzip -9 EMPTY(or xz EMPTY or ...). This should free up most of the 3.3GB, and allow you to restore the file if you later determine something needs it. You can delete the compressed file once you've made sure everything still works (which basically means checking your specific applications still work  nothing in the base system should need such a file).