du: WARNING: Circular directory structure.

[Hopsakee]

Windows Version

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19045.4291]

WSL Version

2.1.5.0

Are you using WSL 1 or WSL 2?

• WSL 2
• WSL 1

Kernel Version

5.15.146.1-2

Distro Version

Ubuntu 22.04

Other Software

No response

Repro Steps

1. Open Ubuntu 22.04 distro in WSL
2. run: 'sudo du -h --max-dept=1` from root folder

Expected Behavior

Just show the size of the folders in root.

Actual Behavior

Show the size of the folders in root with following warning:

du: WARNING: Circular directory structure.
This almost certainly means that you have a corrupted file system.
NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER.
The following directory is part of the cycle:
./sys/kernel/debug/device_component

Diagnostic Logs

trace output from command

[github-actions]

Logs are required for review from WSL team

If this a feature request, please reply with '/feature'. If this is a question, reply with '/question'.
Otherwise please attach logs by following the instructions below, your issue will not be reviewed unless they are added. These logs will help us understand what is going on in your machine.

How to collect WSL logs

Download and execute collect-wsl-logs.ps1 in an administrative powershell prompt:

Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/WSL/master/diagnostics/collect-wsl-logs.ps1" -OutFile collect-wsl-logs.ps1
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
.\collect-wsl-logs.ps1

The scipt will output the path of the log file once done.

Once completed please upload the output files to this Github issue.

Click here for more info on logging
If you choose to email these logs instead of attaching to the bug, please send them to [email protected] with the number of the github issue in the subject, and in the message a link to your comment in the github issue and reply with '/emailed-logs'.

View similar issues

Please view the issues below to see if they solve your problem, and if the issue describes your problem please consider closing this one and thumbs upping the other issue to help us prioritize it!

Closed similar issues:

• 'du' reports "Circular directory structure." (#11514), similarity score: 0.91
• Circular directory structure (#7349), similarity score: 0.86
• Circular directory structure warning. (#389), similarity score: 0.81

Note: You can give me feedback by thumbs upping or thumbs downing this comment.

[Hopsakee]

There are several closed but not resolved issues like this one. Among those are the three the kindly bot just mentioned.

[Hopsakee]

I mailed the WSL logs to [email protected].

[zcobol]

@Hopsakee skip that folder with --exclude argument:

sudo du -h --max-depth=1 --exclude=/sys/kernel/debug/device_component

That directory is empty most likely!

[Hopsakee]

@zcobol thanks for your reply. If I understand you correctly I can ignore the "This almost certainly means that you have a corrupted file system." because it's raised by an empty directory and not an actual circular reference indicating I have somehow corrupted my file system?

In that case I'm happy to ignore the warning using --exclude.

[zcobol]

/sys/kernel/debug is a virtual filesystem. If you try to list any file it will show as empty because they are not real files but entry points into current running kernel. And is nothing unusual to have cross-references inside sysfs. Unmount /sys/kernel/debug and run du again.

[Hopsakee]

Great. I understand. Thanks.