Delete empty "lost+found" folder automatically if it's empty

Solution 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

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.

Solution 2:

[Having a] lost+found directory with a large enough size to contain a large number of unlinked files puts less of a burden on e2fsck to create the directory and grow it to the appropriate size.

[fsck will attempt to create lost+found if it doesn't exist], but in the face of a corrupt filesystem, it can be more risky.

Very old fsck's for other filesystems on other platforms were not able to create /lost+found, nor were they able to grow it. This is the history for the rationale of /lost+found...

It is needed much less often since ext3. With a journaling filesystem, files shouldn't get "lost" on a crash / power failure. You might argue it's only kept to avoid fatal surprises for old-timers (and weirdos who disable the journal). If you don't know what you're missing, maybe it's not a problem.

Still, removing it is like patching e2fsck. You "can" do it, but you shouldn't.