[PLUG] Nautilus sees files, but cp does not

[John Jason Jordan]

On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:04:50 -0500
Robert Citek <robert.citek at gmail.com> dijo:

>To rewrite that in script form:
>
>true && (
>set -x
>ls -la ~/Desktop
>) >& output.txt
>
>The advantage of putting the ls command in this script wrapper is that
>the only thing the questioner has to post is the contents of the
>output.txt file.  With the contents we can all verify that the command
>was correctly entered.  That's what the 'set -x' does.  In addition,
>we see its output along with any error messages.  That's what the
>"(...) >&" construct does, grouping all the commands into a single
>output stream.  The "true &&" is there so that the opening parenthesis
>is more visible.  So with this wrapper we can view exactly what was
>done and how, as there's always a chance that the command was
>incorrectly typed (e.g. ls -1a)
>
>It also provides us with a means to see if the questioner can follow
>instructions.  If they can type in a few lines of a script and send us
>the output file, then there is a good chance of successfully resolving
>the issue.  If not, well, that's a different issue.
>
>Regards,
>- Robert
>
>On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 11:18 AM, William A Morita <wamorita at hevanet.com>
>wrote:
>> How about an "ls -la ~/Desktop" for us to look at ?
>>
>> - Bill Morita

I still think that it is a bug somewhere.

Last night when I temporarily lost my ethernet connection I rebooted. Just now
I tried the ls command again, and now it is showing all of the files as it is
supposed to. It shows all of them whether I am jjj or root. 

There must have been a gremlin somewhere yesterday. The disk must have been
mounted at least read, else Thunar would not have been able to copy the files. 

In each and every case of a file that did not appear with the ls command (or cp
or mv, or tab auto-completion) the permissions were -rw-------. All files that
appeared were -rw-r--r--.

I used the GUI to mount the drive. That is, on the Gnome desktop it appeared as
Places > 136 GB drive. I just clicked on it and Nautilus demanded root password
to mount it. I entered root password and then Nautilus displayed the contents.

After mounting it I tried to drag files to ~/, but some would not copy - always
the ones that had a white X on them, which I later discovered were -rw-------.
From past experience I knew that I cannot launch Nautilus as root; at least not
from the command line. But I also knew how to copy files with the cp command.
So I opened gnome-terminal, switched to root, and started with cd:

[jjj at Devil8 ~]# cd /media/afba6df9-befb-4643-a209-841c2476a989/home/jjj/Desktop/

Then I tried:

[jjj at Devil8 Desktop]# cp App\ Ling\ F (tab here to auto-complete because it's
a PDF with a long filename with lots of spaces)

And the tab failed to auto-complete. So I manually typed in the filename and
the destination ~/Desktop/<same filename>, but the cp command said there was no
such file. So then I did:

[jjj at Devil8 Desktop]# ls -la *.pdf

This command showed very PDF file in the folder except those that I later
discovered were -rw-------. The file I was trying to copy was one of the ones
that did not appear. Subsequently I tried to use mv, but got the same results.
In other words, the -rw------- files were invisible in the terminal. 

Then I tried a different terminal. In fact I installed a different terminal,
just for this occasion. I got the same results in the different terminal. In
retrospect I should have used Ctrl-Alt-F2 to leave X and then try it again, but
it did not occur to me at the time. But since I got the same results in two
different terminal emulators, at least we know the problem is not in
gnome-terminal.

The Nautilus window was still open, so I right-clicked on one of the files with
a white X on it, then Properties > Permissions, and ditto for one of the
files without a white X. Nautilus doesn't do a very thorough job of
displaying permissions, because I couldn't see any difference. Remember, I
couldn't see -rw------- from the command line because the files were not
appearing in the terminal.

At that point I had been shaking my head and uttering increasingly vile oaths
for too long, so I posted about the problem here.

While waiting for suggestions from the list it dawned on me (again from past
experience) that Thunar does launch as root from the command line. So I
launched Thunar, opened a separate window for the Jaunty disk, and was able to
copy all the -rw------- files by dragging and dropping. That gave me the
practical results that I wanted, so the rest is trying to figure out what went
wrong. 

Whatever was wrong was cured by rebooting and remounting the disk. Last night I
got:(1)

[jjj at Devil8 ~]# cd /media/afba6df9-befb-4643-a209-841c2476a989/home/jjj/Desktop/
[jjj at Devil8 Desktop]# ls -la *.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000   315678 2007-05-21 15:57 App Ling Spring 07
Newsletter.pdf 
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000  4167276 2006-10-13 08:17
Compaq_Maint_&_Service_Guide.pdf 
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000   277894 2009-11-14
19:23 irs_w9_filled_out.pdf 
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000   273592 2009-11-13 18:08
irs_w9.pdf 
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000   120752 2007-07-22 09:09 Junicode.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000  4611993 2007-10-29 14:46 Thinkpad_Maintenance.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 46673207 2007-03-04 00:02
Wiley.Ubuntu.Linux.Bible.Jan.2007.pdf

(1) I had to emulate the above because rebooting wiped out the contents of the
terminal from last night. But I remember clear as a bell that no -r-------
files appeared and that the ls command showed exactly seven PDF files.

This morning I get:

[jjj at Devil8 ~]$ cd /media/afba6df9-befb-4643-a209-841c2476a989/home/jjj/Desktop/
[jjj at Devil8 Desktop]$ ls -la *.pdf
-rw------- 1 1000 1000   661091 2008-12-10 09:10 App Ling Fall 08 Newsletter.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000   315678 2007-05-21 15:57 App Ling Spring 07
Newsletter.pdf 
-rw------- 1 1000 1000   673191 2009-06-17 09:16 App Ling Spring
09 Newsletter.pdf 
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000  4167276 2006-10-13 08:17
Compaq_Maint_&_Service_Guide.pdf 
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000   277894 2009-11-14
19:23 irs_w9_filled_out.pdf 
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000   273592 2009-11-13 18:08
irs_w9.pdf 
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000   120752 2007-07-22 09:09 Junicode.pdf
-rw------- 1 1000 1000   389385 2008-12-12 19:24 Smartups_900_users_manual.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000  4611993 2007-10-29 14:46 Thinkpad_Maintenance.pdf
-rw------- 1 1000 1000  4611993 2007-11-06 20:18 Thinkpad_Manual.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 46673207 2007-03-04 00:02
Wiley.Ubuntu.Linux.Bible.Jan.2007.pdf

I have no idea why, but at the moment my vote goes for a bug. Stuff like this
just shouldn't happen. I'd love to file a bug report, but against what? Plus, I
don't know how to reproduce it.