How to delete temp files created by Archive Manager?

Question

I used Archive Manager to extract files from an archive, but there wasn't enough free disk space. After the process crashed my disk remained full and I am unable to locate and delete what is filling up my hard drive. I cleaned up some disk space by moving some files to an external drive and then I attempted the same operation again. This time it succeeded, but again temporary files remained, clogging my hard drive. Where does this app store these files? I have been unable to find them in every way I have tried so far. I am also a complete newbie to Ubuntu (I use 14.10). Any help will be much appreciated.

Solution

Temporary files are usually stored in /tmp, and that's the case even for Archive Manager. Anyway it's not a good practice to batch remove them, since running applications might be using the folder to store temporary files necessary to their current instance to run (as it's the case for Archive Manager), and removing them could break the current instance. So you better either remove the files manually or just reboot, which automatically clears the folder.

Comments

[muru]

it's probably somewhere in ~/.cache. What does du -hd1 ~/.cache say?

[madneon]

How did you extract those files?

[0x2b3bfa0]

@guntbert sorry, I wrote a fast reply from a tablet, now is updated.

[kos]

They shouldn't be stored in ~/.cache, unless it's a bug regression: Launchpad.net: Bug 1, Launchpad.net: Bug 2 and Launchpad.net: Bug 3