Search code examples
synology

Retiring the once only volume, holding important looking files

/volume1 was once my only volume, and it's has been joined by /volume2 in preparation for retiring /volume1.

Having relocated all my content I can see lots of files I cannot explain. Unusually they are all prefixed with @, e.g.

/volume1$ ls -als
total 430144
     0 drwxr-xr-x   1 root    root        344 May  2 16:19 .
     4 drwxr-xr-x  24 root    root       4096 May  2 16:18 ..
     0 drwxr-xr-x   1 root    root        156 Jun 29 15:57 @appstore
     0 drwx------   1 root    root          0 Apr 11 04:03 @autoupdate
     0 drwxr-xr-x   1 root    root         14 May  2 16:19 @clamav
   332 -rw-------   1 root    root     339245 Jan 23 13:50 @cnid_dbd.core.gz
     0 drwxr-xr-x   1 admin   users        76 Aug 19  2020 @database
     0 drwx--x--x   1 root    root        174 Jun 29 15:57 @docker
     0 drwxrwxrwx+  1 root    root         24 Jan 23 15:27 @eaDir
420400 -rw-------   1 root    root  430485906 Jan  4 05:06 @G1.core.gz
     0 drwxrwxrwx   1 root    root         12 Jan 21 13:47 @img_bkp_cache
     0 drwxr-xr-x   1 root    root         14 Dec 29 18:45 @maillog
     0 drwxr-xr-x   1 root    root         60 Dec 29 18:39 @MailScanner
     0 drwxrwxr-x   1 root    root        106 Oct  7  2018 @optware
  7336 -rw-------   1 root    root    7510134 Jan 24 01:33 @Plex.core.gz
     0 drwxr-xr-x   1 postfix root        166 Oct 12  2020 @postfix
  2072 -rw-------   1 root    root    2118881 Jan 17 03:47 @rsync.core.gz
     0 drwxr-xr-x   1 root    root         88 May  2 16:19 @S2S
     0 drwxr-xr-x   1 root    root          0 Jan 23 13:50 @sharesnap
     0 drwxrwxrwt   1 root    root         48 Jun 29 15:57 @tmp

I have two questions

  1. what does the @ prefix signify, and
  2. how can I move/remove them, given that something's going to miss these files.
Solution

  • From experimentation it seems the answers are:

    1. Nothing - they're a convention used by the Synology packaging system, it appears.
    2. With one exception I didn't need to consider the consequences of removing the file system on which these stood. The @appstore directory clearly holds the installed Synology packages, and after pulling /volume1 they showed in the Package Center as "needing repair". Once they were repaired, the same @ prefixed directories appeared in the new volume - and the configuration was retained - so it appears these directories hold only the immutable software components.

    The exception: I use ipkg mostly for fetchmail. I took a listing of the installed packages as well as the fetchmailrc, and then reinstalled the same packages once "Easy Bootstrap Installer" was ready for use (repair didn't work on this, but uninstall and reinstall worked fine).