Re: weird find error on fresh etch system
On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 2:11 PM, Mumia W..
<paduille.4061.mumia.w+nospam@earthlink.net> wrote:
> On 08/13/2008 12:16 AM, Zach Uram wrote:
>>
>> I just installed Debian 4.0 and whenever I use find on / I see:
>>
>> find: WARNING: Hard link count is wrong for ./proc/sys/net: this may
>> be a bug in your filesystem driver. Automatically turning on find's
>> -noleaf option. Earli er results may have failed to include
>> directories that should have been searched .
>>
>> What is going on and how can I fix this?
find is telling you about a kernel bug. You could report it, or
upgrade, or ignore the problem.
> Never use the find command to search /proc; that is a special virtual
> filesystem used to configure your system. If programs touch the wrong things
> in /proc, it could create serious problems for your computer.
Hmm. Have you ever seen such a problem first-hand, or are you just
propagating a rumour you heard somewhere? I ask since find doesn't
actually touch the filesystem, it just traverses it. Of course if
you specify an action like -delete, then yes, find will touch the
filesystem.
> The best way to use "find" is to create a database of all files on your
> system, and "updatedb" does that. The wisely-written script in
> /etc/cron.daily/find gets settings from /etc/updatedb.conf, and those
> settings disable looking into "proc" filesystems.
Only because the result of indexing /proc is rarely interesting, and
always out of date.
James.
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