Delete empty “lost+found” folder automatically if it's empty

Question

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?

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Is there any manner to hide this folder on NFS?

Answer 1

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

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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.

Answer 2

You have one lost+found per partition and you need those for recovery.

Answer 3

This article will give you a proper explanation about lost+found directory : http://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/lostfound.html

Answer 4

cd where the lost+found folder is located
sudo touch .hidden
sudo mcedit .hidden (write lost+found and save with F2)