466 gig lost+found file

[Pushrod]

I noticed that one of my filesystems grew a lost+found directory. It has one file named #0000004, which I ran strings on to see if it contained anything of interest. I noticed that it was showing a lot of stuff and taking awhile, so I canceled it and checked the size of the file. It is 466G, which is 2G more than the partition it lies on. It seems that all of my files are alright, but with 129689 of them, it's hard to be sure.

Can I safely remove this file, or is it going to have ill effects? And how on earth did it get to be so big anyways?

 

[kamikaze]

That does sound rather strange. I'd go into single user mode and fsck the file system before I did anything else.

 

[Pushrod]

I am currently on a backup spree. Once that is done, I will fsck the filesystem in multiple positions and then go from there. Hopefully I can just rm it and call it a day.