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When attempting to check my disk usage under / I found that root did not have access to certain virtual filesystems. I also could not check the permissions on the virtual filesystem. Why is this? 

lanix ~ # du -sk / | sort -rn | head
    du: cannot access ‘/proc/11983/task/11983/fd/4’: No such file or directory
    du: cannot access ‘/proc/11983/task/11983/fdinfo/4’: No such file or directory
    du: cannot access ‘/proc/11983/fd/4’: No such file or directory
    du: cannot access ‘/proc/11983/fdinfo/4’: No such file or directory
    du: cannot access ‘/run/user/1000/gvfs’: Permission denied
    5851640 /
    lanix ~ # cd /run/user/1000/gvfs
    -su: cd: /run/user/1000/gvfs: Permission denied
    lanix ~ # ls -l /run/user/1000/gvfs
    ls: cannot access /run/user/1000/gvfs: Permission denied
    lanix ~ # ls -ld /run/user/1000/gvfs
    ls: cannot access /run/user/1000/gvfs: Permission denied

From /etc/sudoers

    # User privilege specification

root    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
user
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1 Answers1

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See more here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/du-cannot-access-%27-proc-4972-task-4972-fd-4%27-no-such-file-or-directory%27-672916/

/proc is a pseudo filesystem; it's a part of your RAM and contains information for every >existing process. So, if a process does not exist anymore when du tries to count it, or if >a process has closed a file descriptor (subdirectory fd or fdinfo) in the meantime, you get >this message. You must keep in mind, that du will at first build a list of files and >directories to count and later will count their sizes. Meanwhile there will be a lot of >changes on your system - processes are finished, file descriptors are closed and so on.

Cosmin Radu
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  • Thanks for the link. I tried `du -x /` which does not check mounted file systems which examining the root partition. I'm a bit confused though, the output of `df -h` does not show `/proc` as a mounted filesystem, while `/proc/mounts` does. Does this mean that `/proc` is mounted? My understanding is that `df` shows the space taken by mounted file systems, and I don't think `/proc` takes up space.. so I am guessing that is why `/proc` is not shown.. is that right? – user Nov 25 '14 at 12:09
  • Like `/run` also shows up in `/proc/mounts` as well as in the `df -h` output, and that's a temporary filesystem.. – user Nov 25 '14 at 12:33