7

OS - Debian Stable

I downloaded fonts from a website (that seemed legitimate to me) and transferred the contents to /usr/share/fonts/directory. There's a .uuid file being generated for every directory with a string like this as its sole content:

f25e9432-c6f1-4bbe-a33c-89289a8d17f1

This file regenerates right after I delete it. Is this a malicious program? Is this indexing by the OS itself or is it something like fc-cache running in the background? What could be the cause of this?

Improve this question
5
  • What I observed is it's Synaptic or xfsettingsd (in case of XFCE) scanning fonts directories. Commented Jul 6, 2020 at 14:57
  • I'm using XFCE, if that matters. Is it the same for you? Commented Jul 6, 2020 at 17:15
  • I think it doesn't matter. Behavior should be identical on all DEs and all distros which use fontconfig package for font management. fontconfig generates .uuid files for caching purpose to speed up GUI loading time. Any packages linking to fontconfig may trigger a scan of system-wide and user-specific font directories. I observed two as stated above. Synaptic is run manually with root privilges, so creates .uuid files in all font directories. xfsettingsd runs with non-root user UID, so continuously watches user-specific directories only while running as daemon. Commented Jul 7, 2020 at 17:12
  • It seems UUID phenomenon is dropped: lists.freedesktop.org/archives/fontconfig/2018-October/…, so this won't happen in future releases. Commented Jul 7, 2020 at 17:15
  • Nope. The .uuid files are still being created on a fresh install of Mint 20.2. After installing TeX and other font-oriented software I ran fc-cache and it created them in every directory visited. Doesn't matter particularly, but it sure hasn't been dropped yet. Commented Aug 28, 2021 at 0:11

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

This has nothing to do with the fact that you've downloaded your own fonts. This is simply just fontconfigdoing it's job. It very well could just be the cached data created. Only rather, the binary data is being converted into a uuid string/unique ID.

So, I would say no. I do not believe this to be the cause of anything malicious. Nor are any of these occurrences a result from you downloading fonts from your web browser.

Improve this answer
Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.