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saurabhlambe

Member

Registered: 2017-08-21

Posts: 12

User files under "Home" gone missing

Okay, I switched my display manager to xfce from kde-plasma. I ran loads of commands to get xfce up and running.

But I don't quite remember deleting my files in my Home directory at all.

Now I can see only Desktop and Downloads folders in my Home directory.

Need help ASAP.

adesh

Member

Registered: 2016-10-05

Posts: 167

Re: User files under "Home" gone missing

FYI, XFCE is not a display manager but a desktop environment just like KDE and GNOME.

How are you viewing your files? Terminal or some file manager.
What do you get when you run the following in a terminal:

ls -la $(grep $(whoami) /etc/passwd | awk -F: '{print $6}')

saurabhlambe

Member

Registered: 2017-08-21

Posts: 12

Re: User files under "Home" gone missing

My bad. I viewed files from both the terminal and thunar.

Here's the output of that command:

[saurabh@saurabh Downloads]$ ls -la $(grep $(whoami) /etc/passwd | awk -F: '{print $6}')
drwx------    - saurabh 21 Aug 20:02 .adobe
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh 15 Oct 22:50 .anaconda
drwx------    - saurabh  3 Sep 19:52 .anthy
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh  7 Sep 20:37 .atom
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh 27 Oct 16:06 .audacity-data
.rw------- 9.8k saurabh  6 Nov 11:47 .bash_history
.rw-r--r--  283 saurabh  2 Nov 20:48 .bashrc
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh  6 Nov  0:15 .cache
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh  3 Nov 20:15 .cargo
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh 15 Oct 23:01 .conda
.rw-r--r--   40 saurabh 15 Oct 22:51 .condarc
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh  6 Nov 11:29 .config
drwx------    - saurabh  5 Nov 20:34 .dbus
.rw-r--r--   23 saurabh  6 Nov  2:22 .dmrc
.rw-------   16 saurabh 21 Aug 15:58 .esd_auth
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh 11 Oct 17:57 .fonts
.rw-r--r--  110 saurabh 12 Oct 19:59 .fonts.conf
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh 24 Aug 18:04 .gimp-2.8
drwx------    - saurabh 22 Aug 20:51 .gnupg
.rw-r--r--  307 saurabh  6 Nov  3:04 .gtkrc-2.0
lrwxrwxrwx   28 saurabh 22 Oct 16:22 .gtkrc-2.0-kde4 -> /mnt/home/saurabh/.gtkrc-2.0
.rw-r--r-- 4.0k saurabh  3 Nov 21:13 .hyper.js
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh  3 Nov 21:14 .hyper_plugins
.rw------- 1.9k saurabh  6 Nov 11:29 .ICEauthority
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh  6 Nov  0:12 .icons
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh 14 Oct  9:03 .ipython
drwx------    - saurabh 15 Oct 22:52 .jupyter
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh 17 Sep  7:36 .kde4
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh  6 Sep 17:05 .kingsoft
.rw-------   42 saurabh  5 Nov 22:11 .lesshst
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh 25 Aug 20:26 .local
drwx------    - saurabh 21 Aug 20:02 .macromedia
drwx------    - saurabh  6 Nov 11:29 .mozc
drwx------    - saurabh 21 Aug 16:00 .mozilla
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh  3 Nov 21:11 .npm
drwx------    - saurabh 21 Aug 18:38 .pki
.rw-------  108 saurabh 14 Oct  9:08 .python_history
.rw------- 1.5k saurabh 30 Oct 12:45 .recently-used
.rw-------  12k saurabh 12 Oct 19:25 .temp.txt.swp
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh  6 Nov  0:12 .themes
drwx------    - saurabh 24 Aug 18:04 .thumbnails
drwx------    - saurabh  3 Sep 19:46 .uim.d
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh  3 Nov 20:04 .upterm
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh  1 Sep 23:02 .vim
.rw-------  11k saurabh  6 Nov  3:04 .viminfo
drwx------    - saurabh 26 Aug 22:44 .w3m
.rw-r--r--  242 saurabh 21 Oct 20:06 .wget-hsts
.rw-------  208 saurabh  6 Nov 11:29 .Xauthority
.rw-r--r--   89 saurabh  3 Sep 20:58 .xprofile
.rw-------  29k saurabh  6 Nov 12:13 .xsession-errors
.rw-------  59k saurabh  6 Nov 11:26 .xsession-errors.old
drwxr-xr-x    - saurabh  6 Nov 11:24 logs

adesh

Member

Registered: 2016-10-05

Posts: 167

Re: User files under "Home" gone missing

That command listed all the files in you home dir, but the output does not show "Desktop" and "Downloads" directories you mentioned. Were you looking at a different directory? May be your "home" directory is "/mnt/home/saurabh"?

saurabhlambe

Member

Registered: 2017-08-21

Posts: 12

Re: User files under "Home" gone missing

Correct. My home directory is /mnt/home/saurabh. But there too, I could not find my Documents or Music folder. Looks like they've been deleted somehow

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: User files under "Home" gone missing

Read your (or root's) .bash_history to determine what, exactly, you have done.

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seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,868

Re: User files under "Home" gone missing

Your home directory is obviously *not* /mnt/home/saurabh ...
Anyway, discrepancies in that path smell related to the mount status of that path, ie. you might have written into the mounted device and have nothing mounted atm. or you wrote into the unmounted path and now shadow that data by mounting something there.

Present output of "mount"?

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circleface

Member

Registered: 2012-05-26

Posts: 639

Re: User files under "Home" gone missing

The command prompt shows you are in a folder called Downloads, so that is not your home folder.  Make sure to check the files in your home folder, not $HOME/Downloads.

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 19,113

Re: User files under "Home" gone missing

@circleface

ls -la $(grep $(whoami) /etc/passwd | awk -F: '{print $6}')

If whoami returned a username that grep could find in /etc/passwd and the sixth : delimited field of that entry was a string then ls would take that string as the directory to list
in the case the result is an empty string then ls will of course list the contents of the current directory.
Edit:
spelling field not filed

Last edited by loqs (2017-11-07 00:17:42)

circleface

Member

Registered: 2012-05-26

Posts: 639

Re: User files under "Home" gone missing

Right, but, if you start a graphical environment from the shell, and first use 'cd Downloads' before starting the X session, then Downloads will be the default directory in some window managers / desktop environments.  Thus, explaining why the files would appear to be missing.  In this case, just going up one directory should show all the files.  But I get your point about the command specified, you are right about that, I just didn't read it properly.

drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: User files under "Home" gone missing

Do you still need help? I'm not convinced that your files were deleted...

Please start XFCE, open a Terminal window, and post the output of the following commands.

echo $HOME # To see what your home is set to...

grep $(whoami) /etc/passwd # To see how your user is configured (this will not reveal your password)...

cat /etc/fstab # To see how your partitions are supposed to be mounted...

mount # To see how your partitions are actually mounted...