Lower case dirs in home

[BradGad]

Hi folks,

I just set up Debian stable on a VPS and on a Thinkpad I had around... very exciting times for me! I've wanted my own UNIX/Linux server since forever. I actually used to teach this stuff but that was forever ago and my skills have very much atrophied. Big fun (re)learning curve ahead.

Anyhoo... those silly capital file names for directories in home...

I did do a search here and found this, which looks to be how to reconfig so the names will be lowercase for new users:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... ry#p657006

But I wanted to ask a slightly different question: is there anything else in Debian that is expecting to find those directories with capital names? Will it break anything if I just mv them (and delete the capital versions when the mv for some reason creates a second directory and leaves the first)?

Thanks

[dilberts_left_nut]

Pretty sure anything looking for them should reference your XDG settings (it’s used for localisation as well) so just set them as you want.

[yeti]

SHOULD...
I've seen software hard coding these directory names (in English).
hit Shappens!
Just "apt-get purge $SuchStuff" and/or beat them with bug reports until it gets corrected.

[BradGad]

OK, thanks.

I edited /etc/xdg/user-dirs.* like I want... I'll just rename the capital dirs in home and take it from there.

[tynman]

Something to note also... during the Debian install, it sets up an initial non-root User Id, and for that Id it creates a directory under /home. But it does not create any subdirectories in the user's home directory.

(And I agree with Yeti - any software that "expects" some directory to exist should be prepared to create it if it doesn't exist.)

[debiman]

re and found this, which looks to be how to reconfig so the names will be lowercase for new users:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... ry#p657006

this does not look like a complete set of instructions to me.

I edited /etc/xdg/user-dirs.* like I want...

i think this file is owned by the package, so it will get overwritten on updates.
the usual way is to edit
$HOME/.config/user-dirs.defaults
$HOME/.config/user-dirs.dirs

[yeti]

I edited /etc/xdg/user-dirs.* like I want...

i think this file is owned by the package, so it will get overwritten on updates.

I heavily doubt this.
And no package should own stuff in users' home dirs.

Code: Select all

$ grep ^/home /var/lib/dpkg/info/*list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/base-files.list:/home

That really is all packages need to know about "/home".

[debiman]

I edited /etc/xdg/user-dirs.* like I want...

i think this file is owned by the package, so it will get overwritten on updates.

I heavily doubt this.

i know it sucks, but there it is:

Code: Select all

$ apt-file search /etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults 
xdg-user-dirs: /etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults
$ apt-file search /etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf 
xdg-user-dirs: /etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf

And no package should own stuff in users' home dirs.

no, surely not.
or are you somehow implying that /etc is part of a user's home?

[yeti]

The config in /etc won't be overwritten, if you don't request overwriting while updating.
(The rest was some misunderstanding on a migraine weather day here...)

[debiman]

The config in /etc won't be overwritten, if you don't request overwriting while updating.

that's possible. tbh, i never tried that (rule: don't sudo edit files if you can achieve the same without sudo).