# Elastic JVM heap file dumps deletion
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-jvm-heap-file-dumps-deletion/135409
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [June 11, 2018, 5:24pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-jvm-heap-file-dumps-deletion/135409 "2018-06-11T17:24:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Amandeep\_Singh1](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Amandeep_Singh1)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2018, 5:24pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-jvm-heap-file-dumps-deletion/135409/1 "2018-06-11T17:24:54Z")
Elasticsearch ships withs -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemory enabled, this leads to the heap dumps being generated whenever the JVM encounters an OutOfMemoryError.
These generate hprof files in with default location as /var/lib/elasticsearch/ the question i have is how to safely delete these files without affecting the system(running elasticsearch instance).
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### Author:  [@danielmitterdorfer](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/danielmitterdorfer)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2018, 9:43am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-jvm-heap-file-dumps-deletion/135409/2 "2018-06-15T09:43:46Z")
Hi,
Elasticsearch does not open them so you can just delete heap dumps like any other file with `rm` on the command line.
Heap dumps are often useful to understand why the application ran out of memory. I'd advise against it but if you are a 100% certain that you don't want them you can disable it explicitly by setting `-XX:-HeapDumpOnOutOfMemory` instead.
Daniel
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2018, 9:53am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-jvm-heap-file-dumps-deletion/135409/3 "2018-07-13T09:53:13Z")
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