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.
In Linux a file can show up several times in the filesystem without being duplicated. Symbolic links and hard links will cause this to happen, and they’re a normal part of organizing the filesystem. Just because you see a file in several places, that doesn’t mean disk space is wasted with duplicates. There may be only one physical copy of the file, appearing in multiple places. With hard links you need to be especially careful about deleting, since you’ll think you’re deleting one of several duplicates but you’ll in fact delete the only copy of the file.