32-digit long filename of some attachments in file system

[Lynne]

I have about 5 GB of attachments stored in the filesystem. Today, while running an rsync script I wrote, some of the attachments would not transfer over to the other server. I got a Permission Denied error. All the files were in the main attachment directory and named with with a 32-digit filehash with no extension, ie. the path was /blah/blah/attachments/xxIAm32DigitsLongxx, not blah/blah/attachments/1/xxxx.attach . The problem was that some of the attachments had a different owner/group than they should (owned by daemon/daemon instead of mysite/mysite). I went looking in the database for an attachment with a filehash listed in the /blah/blah/attachments/ folder and could not find any of them listed.

I've searched around in here to see if there is a mention of attachments saved as their filehash only, but found no mention of them. I have over 2800 of these from various dates. What are these and are they needed?

[Lynne]

OK, I think I found out why they are there, but now I'm wondering if these are the temporary files stored when an attachment is uploaded? I have a special page for uploading threads/attachments to a couple of the forums and sometimes the attachments get uploaded and then people leave the page or for some reason or another, abandon the upload. Could these be left over attachments that never actually because 'real' attachments?

[Lynne]

Just in case anyone ever comes across this, I threw all those files into a folder called "delete" and then waited to see if anyone posted about attachment problems. No one did, so I deleted the folder.