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.
- https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/162900/what-is-this-folder-run-user-1000
- https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=412850 So if its a bug with flatpaks I’m inclined to delete a certain db at ~/.local/share/flatpak/db
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.
Never touch anything in /run directory.
Thanks! And I will remove it from my search index to restrain from “decluttering”. 👌👍
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.
Don’t delete it. It’s an area of the filesystem where the current user session data is kept. This includes things like sockets to communicate with other session components and lock files. It’s usually hosted on a ram disk so takes up no space in the system and goes away when you shutdown your machine.
https://serverfault.com/questions/24523/meaning-of-directories-on-unix-and-unix-like-systems
- /bin - Binaries.
- /boot - Files required for booting.
- /dev - Device files.
- /etc - Et cetera. The name is inherited from the earliest Unixes, which is when it became the spot to put config-files.
- /home - Where home directories are kept.
- /lib - Where code libraries are kept.
- /media - A more modern directory, but where removable media gets mounted.
- /mnt - Where temporary file-systems are mounted.
- /opt - Where optional add-on software is installed. This is discrete from /usr/local/ for reasons I’ll get to later.
- /run - Where runtime variable data is kept.
- /sbin - Where super-binaries are stored. These usually only work with root.
- /srv - Stands for “serve”. This directory is intended for static files that are served out. /srv/http would be for static websites, /srv/ftp for an FTP server.
- /tmp - Where temporary files may be stored.
- /usr - Another directory inherited from the Unixes of old, it stands for “UNIX System Resources”. It does not stand for “user” (see the Debian Wiki). This directory should be sharable between hosts, and can be NFS mounted to multiple hosts safely. It can be mounted read-only safely.
- /var - Another directory inherited from the Unixes of old, it stands for “variable”. This is where system data that varies may be stored. Such things as spool and cache directories may be located here. If a program needs to write to the local file-system and isn’t serving that data to someone directly, it’ll go here.
Thanks, this doesn’t say anything tho about 2 levels deep in bullet 10. But I get anything in run/user/1000 serves the same purpose.
/run contains all sorts of virtual stuff, it doesn’t persist over a reboot,
I would advise against deleting anything in it as those files are used by programs running as whether user has the ID of 1000 (most likely you)
it contains things such as sockets and lock files so that programs can interact with each other
You’re using flatpak, right? Flatpak uses “portals” to provide access to other parts of your system. When you open files in flatpak apps, you’ll see this folder used for those.
These shouldn’t actually take up any meaningful space, and I wouldn’t delete anything unless you’re experiencing an issue.
Ah that makes sense, I gave strawberry my Nextcloud path to scan for mp3 and add them to its library.
It is most likely another filesystem mounted where the flatpak can see it. A terminal tool like ncdu or even du will take an -x option to not cross file-system boundaries. That will show the true usage of everything bellow where you call it (even though it is a ramfs so not persisted across reboots).
