/run/user/1000: What to do with it?

Joël de Bruijn@lemmy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 58 points –

My main question is about /run/user/1000:

  • Should I avoid touching it?
  • Could I delete it?
  • Is there something wrong with it?

Background: I'm fairly new to Linux and just getting used to it.

I use fsearch to quickly find files (because my filenaming convention helps me to get nearly everything in mere seconds). Yesterday I decided to let it index from root and lower instead of just my home folder.

Then I got a lot of duplicate files. For example in subfolders relating to my mp3 player I even discovered my whole NextCloud 'drive' is there again: /run/user/1000/doc/by-app/org.strawberrymusicplayer.strawberry/51b78f5c/N

Searching: Looking for answers I read these, but couldnt make sense of it.

Puzzled:

  • Is this folder some RAM drive so my disk doesnt show anything strange? Because this folder doesnt even show up at the root level.
  • Are these even real? Because the size of it (aprox 370 GB) is even bigger then my disksize (screenshot).

Any tips about course of (in)action appreciated.

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Never touch anything in /run directory.

Thanks! And I will remove it from my search index to restrain from "decluttering". 👌👍

Don't "declutter" manually. Use your package manager.

I learned a lot in these comments but in this specific context:

  • a flatpak app uses a base directory (mp3 player).
  • I set it to my NextCloud folder.
  • Now run/usr/1000 is "filled" with all my thousands of pdf from personal archive, several times per file (because multiple flatpaks).

These don't need decluttering I learned, but aren't managed by package managers either.

Flatpak is itself a file manager.

That duplicate of your folder in /run is due to filesystem links (or more likely a fuse mount, I've never actually looked into how flatpak works). But either way, they aren't copies of the data.

Don't use flatpak. It encourages dependency hell and ruins validation.

The search index isn't managed by you package manager, is it?