[PLUG] System Files in User's Home Directory Trash

Robert Munro ramunro at speakeasy.net
Sun Jun 26 22:20:00 UTC 2011


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 06:50:43 Rich Shepard wrote:

> Now I'm reminded why I did not remove these files before. In
> /home/pamela/.local/share/Trash/Files/ are what appears to be the
> entire system; for example, I see directories for /Xll, /cups, /dbus.
>
> No directory is a link, and none of the files in these directories is
> a link. When I run 'find' on a file I see they're also where they
> belong (e.g.:
>
>   find / -name xkb
>
> /home/pamela/.local/share/Trash/files/Xll/xkb
> /var/lib/xkb
> /usr/share/X11/xkb
> /usr/share/xfce4/xkb
>
> That the files in her home directory are not softlinks is my concern
> about deleting the entire files/ directory.
>
> Advice?

Are you sure that *none* of the directories in the Trash chain, i.e.,
/home/pamela/.local ,
/home/pamela/.local/share ,
/home/pamela/.local/share/Trash , and
/home/pamela/.local/share/Trash/files , and the subdirectories there,
are links? I'd do ls -al on all of those (piped to less) to make sure.

Deleting a hard link or a soft link just deletes the link, I believe,
not the file linked-to. I just tested that on my system here, but YMMV.

I'd pick a file with a unique name in /usr/share (something that doesn't
look important) and copy it to my home directory. Then delete the copy
that's in /home/pamela/.local/share/Trash/files . See if it still exists
in /usr/share after that and, if so, it should be safe to delete all of
the /home/share/.local/share/Trash/files directory and all its contents.

If the file disappears from /usr/share , then restore the backup saved
in your home directory by recopying it back to /usr/share , and rethink.

Robert
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAk4HsJAACgkQ+qYMIUkNJCw/1QCdHfRbc6fv68coibZg04WLy6KW
OUUAniaI6bbkOLdggI4S0Sx/ALcD4pPZ
=Ieyg
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



More information about the PLUG mailing list