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Somewhat scarce in space in my '/' partition, I ran xdiskusage, and found a folder marked (permission-denied), about 2 GB in size. It doesn't have a name (unless the name is also denied). I've never seen this before (I don't run xdiskusage frequently), and I can't see it using ls -a.

I don't have a swap file configured, and I'm confused what this file could be.

Any suggestions?

(This isn't just a 'permissions' issue as most items I found on the subject seem to imply. I can't change permissions as the file/folder doesn't even have a name)

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It's not a real folder, it's the sum of all folders in any location that xdiskusage that was not able to look inside due to permission issues.

(Specifically, as the manual page says, it's the difference between what the filesystem reports as "used" via df, and what total file size xdiskusage itself could see.)

Run find / -xdev > /dev/null to see a list of all such folders.

Use sudo ncdu -x / to get an overview of disk usage as root.

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  • find / -xdev > /dev/null doesn't produce anything. I don't have ncdu installed, so I ran du instead, but the output is huge. Will install ncdu. Thanks.
    – jcoppens
    Apr 12, 2023 at 13:37
  • Ok... Ran ncdu (and read the man xdiskusage - ashamed I didn't think of that first). The manual seems to imply this space could be due to programs which have not released it yet. Any way to identify those programs?
    – jcoppens
    Apr 12, 2023 at 13:56
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    Tools like lsfd or lsof will list such files as "(deleted)"; deleted files are released when the last process closes them. (Ignore the ones named "memfd:something".) Apr 12, 2023 at 14:34

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