[PLUG] That's It! Nautilus is HISTORY!

[Jason R. Martin]

On 9/5/05, John Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:
> I just lost about 15 Gb of files. Permanently gone. This happened
> while trying to burn them to a DVD for backup. Yes, there is no
> backup.
> 
> Originally I selected the whole folder (about 20 Gb.). But Nautilus
> does not tell you how many bytes the folder is unless you select
> all the files. Not knowing how many there were, I dragged them all
> to a burn window. When I tried to burn a DVD it did not tell me that
> there were too many files to fit. No, the stupid thing said there was
> no DVD in the drive. What it was trying to tell me was that there
> was not a DVD capable of holding 20 Gb in the drive. But the only
> error message it knows is "No disk in drive."
> 
> So after removing and replacing the blank DVD various times I
> decided to use a CDR instead, and this time I knew it couldn't hold
> all the files, so I selected just 600 Mb of them in the burn window.
> But once again, I got the error message. Turns out that whatever is
> in the burn window is what it wants to burn. Never mind that you
> have selected only some of them.
> 
> OK, have to remove the others from the burn window. But from past
> experience, this is very dangerous. You see, it did not occur to the
> Nautilus programmers that it would be useful to show different
> icons for file vs. shortcut to file. In other words, there is no way to
> tell whether you are deleting the file, or a shortcut to it.
> 
> After thinking about this for a bit I decided I'd drag the extra files
> back to the original folder. This, I reasoned, would generate an error
> message if what was in the burn window was really a copy of the
> file instead of just a shortcut to it.
> 
> And it did, indeed, generate the error message. Fine. "I'll just
> cancel this operation then," I thought. Except the programmers
> forgot to put a cancel button on the error message box. So I tried
> hitting the X in the corner of the box, but it was grayed out. So
> were the Xs in the windows for the burn window and the original
> folder window. And the only buttons on the error message window
> were Skip, Overwrite, and Overwrite All. So I clicked on Skip. And
> it skipped the file. But there were 301 files. Looked like I'd have to
> click on Skip 301 times. They also forgot to put in a button for Skip
> All. So I decided, "if these are just copies of the files, let it go
> ahead and overwrite them -- won't make any difference." So I
> clicked on Overwrite All. And guess what effing Nautilus proceeded
> to do? It overwrote 301 files with NADA. They all disappeared.
> They're not in the Trash, they are nowhere. Gone. Just plain gone.
> 
> This is a Very Bad Bug.
> 
> I have to manipulate files constantly on this computer and the
> command line is just too time consuming. Seldom do I need to
> move files with something in common so I can use wildcards.
> Usually I want just "this file" and "that file" and "that other file" and
> so on. Too much typing to do it from the command line. I really
> depend on a GUI file browser.
> 
> Tonight's exercise has be so furious that if I can't get a decent file
> browser that actually works reliably and has a user interface that
> has actually been thought out, I swear I'm gonna unsubscribe, wipe
> out Linux, and install Windows 2000. I just lost four days work. I've
> HAD IT.
> 
> And save the pontificating. "You should have been making backups
> as you went along" is not going to make me feel any better about
> an OS whose users think it's OK to have a file browser that
> crashes several times a day and destroys files.

Wow, I feel for you man.  I hope you can get your data back, you
probably want to look into one of the computer forensics toolkits. 
Try not to do anything with the partition your data was on until you
can get the files back, if possible, the less you do with it the more
likely you'll be able to "undelete" them.

I would REALLY like to encourage you to (when you're feeling calm, but
not too calm) take your story to Ubuntu, or perhaps the Nautilus guys
directly.  This is the kind of stuff they really need (and want!) to
hear.  File a bug, spam a mailing list, whatever, but make sure
someone hears about this (besides PLUG :-), and you might be surprised
by what you find in the next version of Nautilus.

Jason