[PLUG] lost+found

D. Cooper Stevenson cooper at linux-enterprise.net
Wed May 15 21:03:03 UTC 2002


Richard;

This directory is created anytime you create a new filesystem on a drive
with 'mkfs.' This was one of the commands your script executed to create
the new filesystem.

The ext2fs filesystem creates this directory automatically. Linux
(specifically fsck) uses this directory to place fragments of files that
it cannot correctly place back into the filesystem. A hard system crash
can cause this to happen. Sometimes (though not usually), the filesystem
"looses" the file's logical placement on the disk.

With e2fsck, it's generally up to the administrator to find out where
these go and repair the damage. The "Filesystems HOWTO" at
http://www.linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Filesystems-HOWTO.html for details.

At the practical level you can safely ignore this directory it's there
"just in case."

It's also a good thing to look for if you want to know if the directory
is a mount point. 


-Cooper

On Wed, 2002-05-15 at 13:34, Richard Steffens wrote:
> Some many months ago I added a drive to my Linux machine. During the
> process a directory was created called lost+found. I assume it happene
> as part of some script that I was told to run. It is currently empty.
> Does it serve some purpose such that if I deleted it I would mess
> something up?
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
> 
> Dick Steffens
> "Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati"
> http://rsteff.home.attbi.com/
> 
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> 






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