[GRLUG] lost+found

[Jeff DeFouw]

On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 08:09:08PM -0600, L. V. Lammert wrote:
> It looks like a large array we have has a number of lost inodes (ext4), as
> lost+found has gotten pretty big.
> 
> Normally oI would just delete it and relase those inodes back to the free
> pool, but with "rm -rf", it complains directory not empty.
> 
> What would be the correct way to clear lost+found? The partition is way
> too large to do an fsck, and it would be really nice to not have to
> unmount, if possible.

The fact that you have anything in lost+found means someone or something 
already ran fsck and repaired a damaged filesystem or forced it on a 
mounted filesystem.  Lost inodes should never happen on a journaling 
filesystem such as ext3/ext4 unless the kernel has bugs or the hardware 
is bad.

Clearing lost+found should be as easy as deleting everything in it.  The 
error from rm -rf probably means some file has extra protection enabled, 
such as the immutable flag.

-- 
Jeff DeFouw <mrj at plorb.com>