.config folder seemingly reset all program data?

maturecheese · 2022-02-25 01:04:46

I noticed today none of my bookmarks were working in chromium, nor google-chrome. No history either...
Other programs like transmission doesn't have any torrent history. I restarted and my desktop wallpaper had reverted to something else

The /home/{user}/.config folder looks like it has been rebuilt with a clean slate. Files and folders have dates latest yesterday, even for programs I haven't opened in ages.

A bit worrying I must say. What the heck? I haven't been playing around

Last edited by maturecheese (2022-02-25 01:05:46)

jasonwryan · 2022-02-25 01:19:01

Are you using bleachbit, or some other automated "helper" to clean or backup your files?

If not, this is almost inescapably user error: read your shell history.

Trilby · 2022-02-25 02:19:14

maturecheese wrote:

The /home/{user}/.config folder looks like it has been rebuilt with a clean slate.

"Clean slate"? With a new user on an arch linux system there is no ~/.config. So a clean slate would be for the whole directory tree to be gone. I doubt that's what you see. So can you define "clean slate" here? What *is* in the config files? Whatever is in them might give hints as to what created them.

maturecheese · 2022-02-25 10:56:26

Thanks - no, not using any automated cleaning/ backup tool whatsoever.

The .config folder looks like it was deleted and then all programs recreated their initial default config folder as if they were loaded for the first time. There is no folder with a modified date older than feb 24 at about 15:00

Looking inside .config/Brave-Browser all directories have date Feb 24 15:08, as does file .config/Brave-Browser/'First Run'
Certainly was not the first time it was run.

Inside .config/libreoffice/4/user all directories have date Feb 24 15:33 like it was run for the first time. I can't remember the last time I ran libreoffice - definitely not yesterday.

All folders inside .config exhibit this strangeness

If I had somehow deleted .config folder, why would folders for programs appear with default config when not even opened since deletion?

There is only one 'old' file: .config/dleyna-renderer-service.conf with date Nov 2 23:49 - suggesting that the whole .config folder couldn't have been deleted (although I'm as certain as I can be I didn't do that).

My shell history is basic and I'm not seeing anything there of interest.

seth · 2022-02-25 12:30:11

Well, we'll assume that the files didn't delete themselves.

Possible fuck-ups next to stuff like bleachshit are efforts to move (portions of) the configuration to a tmpfs, encryption or (bind-)mounts. Does that ring any bell?
Is only the ~/.config path affected or your entire $HOME or even the /home partition?
If you unmount the /home partition, is there a shadow $HOME w/ the expected files?

Ifff only the timestamps are/were off, this might simply have been some tracker touching them?

My shell history is basic

What does that mean? It got wiped as well?

Trilby · 2022-02-25 15:19:34

Any chance you've made any changes to set/unset XDG_CONFIG_HOME?

Arch Linux

#1 2022-02-25 01:04:46

.config folder seemingly reset all program data?

#2 2022-02-25 01:19:01

Re: .config folder seemingly reset all program data?

#3 2022-02-25 02:19:14

Re: .config folder seemingly reset all program data?

#4 2022-02-25 10:56:26

Re: .config folder seemingly reset all program data?

#5 2022-02-25 12:30:11

Re: .config folder seemingly reset all program data?

#6 2022-02-25 15:19:34

Re: .config folder seemingly reset all program data?

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