Ubuntu – Delete empty “lost+found” folder automatically if it’s empty

filesystemfoldernfs

Every certain amount of time, Ubuntu checks my filesystems and it creates several empty "lost+found" folders.

Can I disable this feature? Is there any way that Ubuntu deletes automatically these folders if they are empty?

Is there any manner to hide this folder on NFS?

Best Answer

Whenever fsck goes through the system and tries to recover damaged files, it will put them into the lost+found folder. I guess this is basically a problem with fsck creating that folder even if there's nothing to put in. As Ubuntu periodically runs those checks on your partitions, those folders will always be re-created, so deleting it won't work.

If you just want to hide the folder from Nautilus, you can create a '.hidden' file containing 'lost+found' and put it into the lost+found parent's folder.

Eg. for the lost+found folder in '/':

echo "lost+found" | sudo tee /.hidden

For the one in you home directory (if any):

echo "lost+found" > ~/.hidden

I guess alternatively you can remove them after every boot by adding the following to the file '/etc/rc.local':

if [ -d /lost+found ]; then
    rmdir /lost+found 2>/dev/null
fi

if [ -d /home/USER/lost+found ]; then
    rmdir /home/USER/lost+found 2>/dev/null
fi

This will run rmdir on the folders if they exist, which only removes them if they are empty (2>/dev/null will discard the "not empty" message from rmdir). There probably aren't lots of directories, so I kept it simple. Just make sure 'exit 0' stays on the bottom line.

Downside: this only keeps track of directories created by fsck during boot. If it's run at a later time, you'll again see that directory. You then could put above into a periodically executed cron job.

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