Standard user directories are replaced by broken symbolic links

Asked Oct 10 '23 at 09:06

Active Oct 11 '23 at 10:27

Viewed 184 times

I have a very strange problem on Ubuntu 20.04. Recently, occasionally some of the standard user directories (Downloads, Music, Public, Templates) disappear and are replaced by broken symbolic links to themselves. I can't associate it with using a new package/application. The directories also disappear from the user-dirs.dirs file:

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"  
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/"  
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/"  
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/"  
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/"  
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/"  
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"  
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"

Results of ls -alh :

[update] I finally discovered the culprit - Okular. Every time I open a document it deletes some of the standard directories and replaces them with broken symbolic links.

edited Oct 11 '23 at 10:27

asked Oct 10 '23 at 09:06

Uncle Izzy

Create the directories again and repair the user-dirs.dirs file. Not sure what could have caused this. – vanadium Oct 10 '23 at 13:37
@vanadium, thanks for the reply! Done that several times already, it happens repeatedly. The working hypothesis this is the anti-virus, but no actual evidence for that. Trying to monitor the directories with inotifywait. Weird problem. – Uncle Izzy Oct 11 '23 at 10:09
Yes, I suffer from the same problem. Okular? Yes, I actually used it recently. It makes sense. Thank you for the hint! (what an obnoxious bug!) – meisterluk Oct 19 '23 at 11:54
3

Does this answer your question? Home directories turned into symbolic links without telling me the reason – Daniel T Jan 23 '24 at 05:46

Standard user directories are replaced by broken symbolic links

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