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jldugger
Asked: 2009-05-19 19:41:40 +0800 CST

Is it possible to hide lost+found?

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Given a partition intended solely for storing music, video and so-on, is it possible to hide the lost+found directory?

linux unix filesystems files storage

9 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Create a subdirectory in that filesystem and share/symlink that instead of the filesystem root directory.

    It's a bad idea to remove the lost+found directory. When recovering, fsck needs an existing multi-sector directory in which to create directory entries for lost files. If there is no lost+found directory, then it has to create one, potentially overwriting data.

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  2. For Gnome2/Mate Nautilus/Caja based desktops, create a file called .hidden in the root folder of the drive.

    Edit the contents to read:

    lost+found

    Nautilus will now hide the lost+found folder if you refresh. Press 'ctrl-h' to toggle the hidden items visible/invisible.

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  3. $ ls --ignore=lost+found

    So make that an alias

    $ alias ls='ls --ignore=lost+found'

    With the updated ls that is part of GNU coreutils 8.15

    re: http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html

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  4. Nautilus (and Konq?) will interpret a .hidden file in a directory as a list of files to hide. Otherwise, as others have suggested, use XFS or ReiserFS.

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  5. No. But you can delete it (it'll be recreated at the next fsck), or you can use a different file system which doesn't need a lost+found. ext2/3 does.

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  6. At least in Ubuntu just change the owner of the directory to root

    sudo chown -R root:root '/media/user/device/lost+found'

    that's it.

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  7. Lost+Found is where FSCK is going to deposit bits of files that it was able to recover if your file system is damaged. If the directory is currently empty, you are safe to just delete it.

    FSCK (I believe) will re-create it if it has anything that needs to be put there.

    Not sure why the presence of that directory is problematic for you, though?

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  8. rmdir lost+found
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  9. No. It can't be hidden because under UNIX os's, only files that begin with a period are hidden from a standard view.

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