On Fri, Aug 11, 2023 at 12:03:26AM +0200, Nicolas George wrote: > Default User (12023-08-10): > > > > And, if /lost+found should be excluded, then shouldn't "lost+found" > > > > in any other directories be excluded from backups as well? Why/why > > > > not? > > > Unfortunately, I regret to say that I did not find that the answer to > > the question(s) about lost+found in the original post were contained in > > the explanation(s) of its function - at least in what I have read so > > far. > > The lost+found directory at the root of the filesystem is special, it is > created when the filesystem is created and set up to receive orphaned > files. A lost+found directory elsewhere… is just a directory with a > wacky name.
Expanding on this: the only time there are ever going to be files in the lost+found directory is if your file system has suffered some damage/corruption, and fsck has found some files that are not referenced by any directory. Fsck puts those files in lost+found with a procedurally generated name, since fsck doesn't have any idea what the file's original names were. If you ever see files in lost+found, then you know that this has occurred. Furthermore, it is on *you* to try to figure out what each file is, where it came from, and what it should be called. This will be a 100% manual process.
