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.

  • @BananaTrifleViolinEnglish
    5•9 months ago

    I think others have answered what the folder should do.

    FSearch is great, but I wouldn’t index the entire file system. There isn’t much point in indexing things you won’t be using such as all the system files and the representations of hardware processes. It’s a bit like on Windows indexing c:\windows - you just don’t need all that clogging up your search results. But the Linux filesystem encompasses much more so you’d get even more stuff.

    On my system I index my home folder (where all your own files will be kept) and my mount points (for me a series of drives I mount under /mnt/). You could also index /media (or variants) as that is where USB drives, and CDs etc would mount to - but I don’t tend to index USB sticks etc.

    I can see circumstances where you might want to index other locations depending on how you use fsearch and Linux, but I think for most users it’d just be unnecessary indexing and results.

    Edit: I saw someone else mention /etc too. That can be useful if you want to find system config files. They also mentioned /usr/share/docs which contains a lot of the Linux manual/distro docs amongst others. If you want to access that then it’s not a bad idea to index it, although most people are online all the time now on multiple devices so it may be a bit redundant for most users day to day; I tend to just search online documentation.