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I use Lubuntu 22.04 LTS on a laptop (ext4) and I have an external 1TB Samsung T7 SSD-drive attached to it, also formatted in ext4.

I did record a video screen capture which resulted in a 4.3 GB .mkv file owned by me as user. The T7 is owned by root and has a folder on it with a subfolder both owned by me as a user. When I try to copy the screen capture file from the laptop to the subfolder I get a ">" sign and no action at all.

The command that I used is (followed by the response ">"):

    sudo cp -p /home/user/Video's/path/to/file.mkv  /media/myusername/UUID_of_T7/folder/subfolder
    >

I was not asked for my password.

When I tried to copy another small text file owned by me as a user, I was able to copy it with a similar command to the same subfolder. But a small video screen capture of 2.4 MB (.mp4) made with the same program (SimpleScreenRecorder), also gave the same odd response (the ">" symbol).

I did make a copy of my home directory as a backup before without any problems to the same T7, I did this also for another user with again no problems.

It cannot be the file size, as ext4 can handle that, also the smaller video screen capture gave the same response, so size is ruled out. The source video that i capured was DRM, but I see no way of that being transferred to the capture, also I can play back the capture without any problems, so DRM is ruled out also. What could be the case here?

plopper
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1 Answers1

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As Jos pointed out in a comment to my question, the ">" symbol comes up as a consequence of having "Video's" in the source path of the copy command.

Strangely enough that directory contains an apostrophe! The shell is expecting another ' and waits for me to input that, hence the ">"-prompt, which is a sign from the shell of expecting more input on the next line as a continuation of the previous line.

I did correct the situation by changing the "Video's" directory to "Video_s" and now the copying went flawless.

It may be that in Jörgs experience, by default, as Jörg W Mittag commented, only a directory named Videos is created during installation, but this "Video's" directory in my installation was automatically created during the installation of my Lubuntu 22.04 LTS.

I guess it has to do with the translation to my native language, which is Dutch, of the English directory name Videos that happened during the installation, because of my locale setting. Just like the directory "Documents" is called "Documenten" in my installation. In Dutch the plural of video is video's.

Still it is rather stupid to allow the installation procedure to have directories created with these kind of erroneous names.

I wonder if this must be reported as a bug...

plopper
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  • The naming of the directory is not erroneous, as it is the proper spelling of the word, and having a ' in the file name is perfectly fine, as is having e.g. a space or a double quote. The problem comes with using the file name unquoted and un-escaped in a command. – Jos Jan 17 '23 at 09:05
  • @Jos: You are right. But it makes things unnecessary complicated for me as a user because I must compensate by escaping it with a backslash (). It can be done, but it undeniably complicates things. I will correct my last sentence in the answer above, because it is NOT a bug. – plopper Jan 17 '23 at 10:09