default folders missing

[hush]

hi,
i am new around here, sorry i don't know where this question would fit so i am posting it in the "general questions". anyways i had installed thunar on my debian(stable) install and its been about a week, and just about an hour ago or so i find i don't have the default folders (downloads, documents and the like) in my home folder and i had important data saved in them. anyone knows what's going on? i google a bit and couldn't find anything.any help would be very helpful thank you.

[sgosnell]

Are you sure they're gone? It may be just the view you're using on Thunar. Do you see them if you use ls in a terminal?

[hush]

hi,
yes its gone except for desktop and public they are gone and also the files inside desktop are also missing but the folder "desktop" remains. i dont know what caused this, i had thunar installed a while back and everything was fine and all of a sudden everything is is just gone.

[dilberts_left_nut]

Check for any other dir's like /home/otheruser that may have been used with a borked up user definition or such.

Also check the /home mount if you have it on a separate partition.
Maybe the mount is failing and you are looking at the underlying /home on the root partition (or the other way around).

Check lost+found for any orphaned files collected by fsck or such.

What else haven't you told us?
Files generally don't just disappear by themselves - it will be *something* that *someone* has done.

[hush]

yea i checked the list+found folder and all i can see there is #"followed by some number" i tried cding into them but it gave nothing. yea i am fairly new to debian, that apart my /home is in the same partition and yea i myself am confused as to what happened. files disappeared:/ is there a way to check nautilus history? and thank you for replying

[kiyop]

yea i checked the list+found folder

lost+found?

and all i can see there is #"followed by some number" i tried cding into them but it gave nothing.

What did you do? Did you double-click on the thunar?

yea i am fairly new to debian, that apart my /home is in the same partition

/home is different from subdirectories in /home.
I want to know the contents of /etc/fstab, but mounting the partitions used in the problematic debian with the problematic debian may overwrite something in the partitions, which may make it difficult to restore lost data.
If you can boot another linux (favourably debian-based linux) than the problematic debian, such as live debian, boot with it and execute the following with root privilege

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blkid

and post the results here.
You may be able to execute "photorec" to recover lost files.

[hush]

<file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda3 during installation
UUID=3f7b34c0-6d9b-4bbd-8959-4163ac92b5c6 / ext2 errors=remoun$
# swap was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=26b69571-c544-46f3-a989-ee8aeda76f49 none swap sw $
/dev/sr0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/usb0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

heres the contents of fstab. i am sorry it was a typo i meant lost+found.
i CDed into the folder and on ls it shows

root@debian001:/lost+found# ls
#321927 #551838 #98458 #98459 #98460

sorry right dont have the means to boot a live os as of now..but as soon as i get i i ll post the results of blkid

[kiyop]

Thank you for replying

UUID=3f7b34c0-6d9b-4bbd-8959-4163ac92b5c6 / ext2 errors=remoun$/quote]

Did you get the info on /etc/fstab by "nano"?
The last of the lines which is longer than the width of the terminal is omitted as "$".
If you want to display all the lines,

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more /etc/fstab
cat /etc/fstab

is better. I wonder if another lines which are not shown in the above post of yours exists.

root@debian001:/lost+found# ls
#321927 #551838 #98458 #98459 #98460

What is displayed by

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find /lost+found/
ls -la /home/*/

executed by root privilege? You need not post all the contents of the result, if you want to hide your privacy.

Edited at Sat Apr 26 19:52:32 JST 2014

Excuse my quoting your post wrongly. I leave it unchanged to blame me.

[hush]

hi,
first of all no, its thank you not the other way around
yes i used nano,so henceforth i am supposed to use cat? anyways heres the result for

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cat /etc/fstab

# cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda3 during installation
UUID=3f7b34c0-6d9b-4bbd-8959-4163ac92b5c6 / ext2 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=26b69571-c544-46f3-a989-ee8aeda76f49 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/sr0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/usb0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

and as for

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find /lost+found/

i got the same result pretty much.

# find /lost+found/
/lost+found/
/lost+found/#98458
/lost+found/#98459
/lost+found/#98460
/lost+found/#321927
/lost+found/#551838

thanks for the advice will take care of that :3

[kiyop]

What is the result of the following commands executed with root privilege?

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file /lost+found/*

[hush]

file /lost+found/*
/lost+found/#321927: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.02
/lost+found/#551838: ASCII text
/lost+found/#98458: ASCII text
/lost+found/#98459: ASCII text
/lost+found/#98460: ASCII text

the command gave me this

[kiyop]

Are the listed files, such as /lost+found/#321927, the files you lost?
If not, I suggest you not booting the debian before you get the lost files recovered.
Instead, boot some linux different from the debian and execute photorec (maybe in testdisk package) to recover lost files in the debian partition(s).
If you don't understand how to execute the above, please let me know.

[hush]

hi,
well they are not the files i lost.. like i indicated earlier the files i lost are the default folders like Downloads, pictures and the like.. and as for the process you described i am not quite sure i know how to do it. help very much appreciated thanks a lot

[kiyop]

Can you boot another OS except the problematic debian on that PC? Otherwise, can you boot another PC except the problematic PC?
If you can, download some live linux iso file such as "system rescue cd" from http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage

Burn it to USB/CD-R/DVD-R according to https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/index.en.html#record-unix

Then, boot with the burnt media.

As for testdisk and photorec, read
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
and
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

[hush]

i have got a few ISO files of Ubuntu which i can live boot. will it suffice? sorry for replying late i am having my finals and busy with it. that apart i ll come back hopefully with a positive result. and above all thanks a ton. i can only hope to become like you some day and help people like you do respect!

[kiyop]

i have got a few ISO files of Ubuntu which i can live boot. will it suffice?

If only you can boot testdisk and photorec, it suffices.
If testdisk and photorec are not installed on the live ubuntu, you may be able to install it if it can connect to internet,

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install testdisk

[monkeyskeletons]

Hello,
The default folders for Debian are created and managed by
xdg-user-dirs

and

xdg-user-dirs-gtk

First thing I would recommend is to verify that those are not missing, like so:

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# dpkg -l | grep xdg-user-dirs-*

this should list them.. if not, the next step would be to do as so:

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# apt-get install xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk

once that command completes, logout and then back in. You should have your missing folders back.

Note: If the installation of the packages tell you that they are already the most current version, then you could do this to remedy the installation issues:

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# apt-get remove xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk

then do the installation. I would not recommend an apt-get purge on these packages, as your original configurations will stay the same as prior to the reinstall that way.

Cheers!