When I run a job using Slurm via sbatch, sometimes it generates a file with a filename like core.12345 (with a different 5-digit string at different times). I could not find any documentation about what this file does and why it's generated, but there are some mentions of it in the docs.
What does this file do and why is it generated? (Is it even being generated by Slurm or is this something else?)
Is there a way to suppress it from being generated? (It's quite big, on the order of several gigabytes, and automatically writes to my home directory on the cluster)
The core dump files are not generated by Slurm, but by the operating system. They keep the memory record of a process that have crashed.
They can be used for tracing the execution or debugging.
You can adjust the core dump file size including this command in your .bashrc:
limit coredumpsize 2500
More info: