Getting "find . proc/xxxx no such file or directory" while i am trying to retreive the backup file

Question

When I try to search for a file using the command :

find . -name $tar_file_name -type f -print0|xargs -0

it gives me those errors :

find: ‘./proc/12049’: No such file or directory
find: ‘./proc/20958’: No such file or directory
find: ‘./proc/21062’: No such file or directory
find: ‘./proc/21073’: No such file or directory

Could anyone tell me the reason and possible solutions to solve this ?

Answer 1

If you man find, you could find the below option -ignore_readdir_race.

 -ignore_readdir_race
              Normally,  find  will  emit  an error message when it
              fails to stat a file.  If you give this option and  a
              file  is deleted between the time find reads the name
              of the file from the directory and the time it  tries
              to  stat  the  file, no error message will be issued.
              This also applies to files or directories whose names
              are  given  on  the  command line.  This option takes
              effect at the time the command line  is  read,  which
              means that you cannot search one part of the filesys-
              tem with this option on and  part  of  it  with  this
              option  off (if you need to do that, you will need to
              issue two find commands instead, one with the  option
              and one without it).

It will be the best practice to solve this problem.

Answer 2

/proc contains the pids information in files so once a processes's work is done it's pid file will be removed from there. Take it as this way when find ran then /proc/some_pid was present and it has taken in it's memory but when output reached out to xargs as standard input at that time those files were removed since processes would have completed so it is giving an error there since it is not able to find it in system. To remove errors from screen you could do following then.

find . -name "$tar_file_name" -type f -print0 2>/dev/null |xargs -0

Or if you DO NOT want to remove all errors(which above command does) then better ignore /proc path itself from find command then.

find . ! -path '/proc' -name "$tar_file_name" -type f -print0 |xargs -0