[TriLUG] Ubuntu 16.04 - /proc delete directories not permitted

[Joseph Mack NA3T via TriLUG]

On Sun, 10 Jul 2016, mr-trilug via TriLUG wrote:

> I ran a backup script I believe had worked before.
> Result was /proc filled directories and subdirectories.

I'm not sure what you did.

I assume you backed up /proc and now have large files in your backup, that you 
can't delete. I don't know why you can't delete the backups of /proc.

If this isn't what you did, then I'll have to wait to find out what really 
happened.

However you don't need to backup anything in /proc. /proc contains files 
generated by the kernel. There used to be a file (I think /proc/mem) that was 
the same size as your RAM. I think if you backed it up, you would get an image 
of your memory. You only need backup the directory /proc, which is a mountpoint 
for the proc filesystem.

Joe

> Most with 41 
> directories/files.
> Permissions are typically  -rw-r--r--. Owner:Group = root:root.
> using cli for just one  such directory:
>     "/proc$ sudo rm -rf  1/sm*
>     [sudo] password for mver:
>     rm: cannot remove '1/smaps': Permission denied"
>
> There are 131071 Gb of directories/files there in /proc most of it nonsense
> Attempts to  sudo chown mver:mver/ or sudo chmod 0555 or 0777 fail to 
> change anything (although the -v parm suggests that the changes are been 
> attempted but not permitted.
>
> The problem started with:
>
> "sudo tar -cpzf bkupUb16.04-${dt}.tar.gz --exclude='bkupUb'* 
> --exclude='/home' --exclude='/media'  --exclude='/mnt' --exclude='/tmp' 
> --one-file-system / home"  where $dt was a date string.
>
> Your thoughts?
> With thanks, Mike R.
>
>

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) austintek (dot) com - azimuthal equidistant
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