I can't access my Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos

Question

I have upgraded from Ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04 and now I can't access Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos folders.

When I click on them I get this message:

Did I choose to delete them during the installation or what I have done wrong and how can I fix this?

Image added with information from comments:

This is what I have got after mount command:

*cosmin@cosmin-Ubuntu:~$ mount
/dev/sda5 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (rw)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)
none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)
none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /run/user type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=104857600,mode=0755)
none on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw)
/dev/sda7 on /home type ext4 (rw)
systemd on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,none,name=systemd)
/dev/sda3 on /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,default_permissions,blksize=4096)
/dev/sda2 on /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,default_permissions,blksize=4096)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=cosmin)
/dev/mmcblk0p1 on /media/cosmin/disk type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uid=1000,gid=1000,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,showexec,flush,uhelper=udisks2)*

This is what I've got after df -h

*cosmin@cosmin-Ubuntu:~$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5       9.7G  6.2G  3.0G  68% /
none            4.0K     0  4.0K   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev            3.9G  4.0K  3.9G   1% /dev
tmpfs           794M  1.5M  793M   1% /run
none            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none            3.9G   84K  3.9G   1% /run/shm
none            100M   44K  100M   1% /run/user
/dev/sda7        38G  2.1G   34G   6% /home
/dev/sda3       336G  234G  103G  70% /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091
/dev/sda2        80G   76G  4.1G  95% /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1
/dev/mmcblk0p1   15G  373M   15G   3% /media/cosmin/disk

This is the output of ls -ld /media/cosmin/*/*

*cosmin@cosmin-Ubuntu:~$ ls -ld /media/cosmin/*/*
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 เม.ย.  6  2014 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/12d.Practise
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin      25315 ธ.ค.   2  2012 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/ac1.txt
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin      27198 ธ.ค.   2  2012 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/ac2.txt
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ต.ค.  26 10:05 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/arcgis
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 พ.ย.   3  2012 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Autodesk
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin     714562 พ.ย.  15 11:41 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/bdlog.txt
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin    3271472 ส.ค.  13  2013 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/bdr-bz01
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin        684 ต.ค.  11  2013 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/bdr-cf01
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin   46879860 ก.ย.  24  2013 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/bdr-im01.gz
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin     253404 ต.ค.  11  2013 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/bdr-ld01
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin       9216 ต.ค.  11  2013 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/bdr-ld01.mbr
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 พ.ย.  14 13:01 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Boot
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin     383786 พ.ย.  14 13:01 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/bootmgr
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ธ.ค.   5  2013 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Civil 3D Projects
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ต.ค.   9  2012 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Civil 3D Project Templates
lrwxrwxrwx 2 cosmin cosmin         60 ก.ค.  14  2009 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Documents and Settings -> /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Users
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin          4 พ.ค.  23  2014 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/end
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin         45 ม.ค.  21  2013 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/error.log
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ต.ค.   8 07:20 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/flexlm
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin      12288 ต.ค.  26 06:26 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Gistutorial
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin      12288 ต.ค.  26 09:33 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Gistutorial - Copy
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ต.ค.   9  2012 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/MSOCache
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ต.ค.   4 11:54 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/My Projects
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ม.ค.  23  2015 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/OLYMPUS
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ก.ค.  14  2009 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/PerfLogs
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin      28672 ต.ค.  13 19:28 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/ProgramData
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin      12288 ต.ค.   8 06:10 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Program Files
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin      24576 ต.ค.  25 10:31 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Program Files (x86)
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ก.ย.   2 19:18 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Python24
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ก.ย.   1 19:38 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Python25
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ต.ค.  25 10:35 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Python27
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ต.ค.   8  2012 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Recovery
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 มี.ค.   3  2013 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/$Recycle.Bin
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin       1009 ธ.ค.   2  2012 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/sc1.txt
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin       2676 ธ.ค.   2  2012 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/sc2.txt
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin         86 ต.ค.   9  2012 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/setup.log
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ก.ค.  13  2013 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/SWSetup
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ต.ค.   9  2012 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/system.sav
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin      20480 พ.ย.  14 00:00 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/System Volume Information
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 มิ.ย.  18  2014 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/totalcmd
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ต.ค.   8  2012 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Users
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin      28672 ต.ค.  30 08:54 /media/cosmin/126AEB776AEB564F1/Windows
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ต.ค.  26 09:53 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/3DAnalyst
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 พ.ย.  13 19:23 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/A
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 เม.ย. 21  2014 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Australia_Picassa's Photos
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ม.ค.  19  2015 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Bryan Peterson_Tutorials
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ก.พ.  25  2013 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/CIMECO
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin       7199 ม.ค.  27  2014 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Cosmin Dinu Marginean.jpg
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ก.ย.   6 20:22 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/C-Spy
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin      28672 พ.ค.  12  2014 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Filme
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin      98304 พ.ย.  10 12:34 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/For Blog One week aound Thailand
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ต.ค.  11 20:02 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Foto 11.10.2015
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ต.ค.   4 11:50 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Fulgere
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ก.ค.   2  2013 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Galaxy SII_01.07.2013
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       8192 ต.ค.   4 11:50 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/GIMP tutorials
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 พ.ค.  12  2014 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/I9100XWLSS_I9100OXFLS3_COA
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 เม.ย.  6  2014 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Kit-uri
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin    1310720 พ.ย.  26  2014 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Lightening
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       8192 ส.ค.   3  2014 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Logs
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin   33742017 พ.ค.  27  2013 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Manual GIMP 2.8 .pdf
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 มิ.ย.  17  2013 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Matemetica
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin     894976 ก.ย.  22  2005 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/msdia80.dll
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       8192 พ.ค.  10  2015 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Muzica
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ต.ค.  27 10:35 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/My ArcGIS Training
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin      49152 ต.ค.   4 11:52 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/New folder
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin     131072 พ.ย.   9 13:55 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/One week around Thailand
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin 8537882624 พ.ย.  14 15:22 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/pagefile.sys
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ต.ค.   8  2012 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/$RECYCLE.BIN
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 ธ.ค.   3  2014 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/RH
-rw------- 2 cosmin cosmin 8589225441 ต.ค.  15  2014 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Roy_Hill_Mine_10cm_Sep2014.ecw
-rw------- 2 cosmin cosmin        158 ธ.ค.   3  2014 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Roy_Hill_Mine_10cm_Sep2014_rectified.jgw
-rw------- 2 cosmin cosmin        151 ธ.ค.   3  2014 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/Roy_Hill_Mine_10cm_Sep2014_rectified.tfw
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin          0 ต.ค.  13  2013 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/System Volume Information
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin      98304 ต.ค.   2 23:25 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/To be checked
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin     655360 เม.ย. 13  2013 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/TOP 1ooo - The last 30 Years 1975-2oo5
-rw------- 1 cosmin cosmin  915715818 พ.ย.  13 15:31 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/ubuntu-14.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso
-rw------- 2 cosmin cosmin     167936 พ.ค.   8  2015 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/voice-viewer.exe
drwx------ 1 cosmin cosmin       4096 พ.ค.  19  2013 /media/cosmin/D232E5F732E5E1091/WEB Design*

Open a terminal, and give us the output of running the three commands pwd, echo $HOME, and ls. That should help us diagnose the problem. — Darael, Nov 15 '15 at 07:28
this is what I get after the 3 comands: Desktop Mac-OS-Lion(Docky).tar MBuntu-Wallpapers.zip Downloads MBuntu-Wallpapers — CosminDM, Nov 15 '15 at 07:49
@CosminDM earlier you had a screenshot linked to this question earlier showing only a pixel... — Andrew, Nov 15 '15 at 08:12
@Andrew sorry about that I have no idea why, I'm quite new to all this stuff ! — CosminDM, Nov 15 '15 at 08:20
No issues @CosminDM can you edit question to append your outputs in an order along with the commands? I'm not able to make sense of your output! — Andrew, Nov 15 '15 at 08:24
and @CosminDM please please do not use images to show information. Copy and paste the contents of a terminal window. That makes the information searchable. The image makes me believe the worst thing happens though: stuff got deleted... — Rinzwind, Nov 15 '15 at 08:26
You also need to include the contents of ls /home/* by the way ;) — Rinzwind, Nov 15 '15 at 08:27
cosmin@cosmin-Ubuntu:~$ pwd /home/cosmin cosmin@cosmin-Ubuntu:~$ echo $HOME /home/cosmin I hope this will make ... Thanks! cosmin@cosmin-Ubuntu:~$ ls Desktop Mac-OS-Lion(Docky).tar Screenshot from 2015-11-15 14:52:11.png Downloads MBuntu-Wallpapers.zip cosmin@cosmin-Ubuntu:~$ — CosminDM, Nov 15 '15 at 08:32
and this cosmin@cosmin-Ubuntu:/home$ ls cosmin lost+found cosmin@cosmin-Ubuntu:/home$ — CosminDM, Nov 15 '15 at 08:34
and something I am missing in the question: in 13.10 did you use /home/cosmin/ with the normal dirs in there? Or had you changed the location of the directories to elsewhere? — Rinzwind, Nov 15 '15 at 08:34
No, I haven't... but I remember that I have followed a tutorial to install Ubuntu with different partition on my laptop where I have Win too and I have made partitions as: 54 GB /dev/sda4 Extended Partition and inside I have 11 GB /dev/SDA5 File System Root; 2.1 GB /dev/sda6 Linux Swap and 41 GB /dev/sda7 Ext4/HOME. Now as I previous said... I'm "NEW" with all this stuff, but I think these folders where on 41 BG /dev/sda7 Ext4/HOME, isn't it? Now with this upgrade I'm not sure what I have done wrong but definitely I did something ... — CosminDM, Nov 15 '15 at 08:50
Please [edit] your question and add the information from your previous comment. That's almost certainly the issue. Also make sure to include the output of these commands: mount, df -h and sudo parted -l /dev/sda. It sounds like you've simply not mounted your home partition and that's easy to fix, but we'll need the output of those commands to be sure. Also, please don't post screenshots of your terminal. Just copy/paste the text directly into your question. Use the formatting tools to get it right. — terdon, Nov 15 '15 at 10:45
Your last command did fail because of space missing between options and arguments: sudo parted -l /dev/sda — F. Hauri - Give Up GitHub, Nov 15 '15 at 13:37

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

First, you may want to use the shell terminal in order to try to access your folders, so you can confirm if they exist or not, and, if they exist, see if they're empty or not. To do so, open a shell terminal window and run this supercommand:

cd ~ && ls -las --color |more

You'll see a colorful list of all the contents of your home folder (/home/cosmin). Even hidden files and folders will be shown to you. Press the spacebar key to scroll 1 page down and see more of the contents of your home directory. Repeat the process until the end. This will allow you to check if your personal directories - like Downloads, Documents et cetera - are still there. If they are, you can cd into them and check their contents. For instance, if the Downloads folder is present inside of your home folder, then this supercommand:

cd ~/Downloads && ls -las --color |more

...will show you what's inside of that folder.

If your folders are not present, then they were deleted. I'm sorry, they're gone, you'll have to recreate them. Please read this post about how to create new user accounts, manually create user folders et cetera.

If your folders are present, then close your file manager and run this command in the shell terminal:

xdg-user-dirs-update

Now try to access your folder again. If it didn't work, run this other command:

xdg-user-dirs-update --set DOCUMENTS $HOME/Documents

If it works, just repeat the process with your other directories:

xdg-user-dirs-update --set DOWNLOAD $HOME/Downloads
xdg-user-dirs-update --set MUSIC $HOME/Music
xdg-user-dirs-update --set PICTURES $HOME/Pictures
xdg-user-dirs-update --set VIDEOS $HOME/Videos

...and so on.

For more info, run this shell command:

info xdg-user-dirs-update

If xdg-user-dirs-update doesn't solve the problem, you may want to try something more extreme, like the following supercommand:

sudo rm -rfv ~/.cache ~/.config ~/.local ~/.profile && sudo telinit 6

The supercommand above will delete your profile's cache, GUI configuration files, profile data and preferences, then restart the system. Afterwards, you may try running those xdg-user-dirs-update --set... commands again.

If nothing works but your personal folders (Downloads, Documents etc.) exist and are not empty, make a backup of them. E.g. if you plug in a flash drive mounted at /media/cosmin/BACKUP, then you can run this command:

sudo cp -R ~ /media/cosmin/BACKUP

...or you may prefer to copy folders one by one:

sudo cp -R ~/Downloads /media/cosmin/BACKUP
sudo cp -R ~/Documents /media/cosmin/BACKUP
sudo cp -R ~/Pictures /media/cosmin/BACKUP

...and so on.

After the backup, use the control panel in order to:

Create a new user account and give it administrative privileges (this is gonna be your new account).
Then delete the (now old) account "cosmin".
Copy the contents from your backup back to your personal folders. Note: do NOT overwrite the folders! E.g. if the new account is cosmin2, then instead of copying /media/cosmin/BACKUP/Downloads over /home/cosmin2/Downloads, you'll have to access /media/cosmin/BACKUP/Downloads and copy everything that's inside this folder, then paste them inside of /home/cosmin2/Downloads.

Instead of rm -rf you could use mkdir .trash && mv -t .trash .config .local .gnome — F. Hauri - Give Up GitHub, Nov 15 '15 at 13:36

F. Hauri - Give Up GitHub · Answer 2 · 2015-11-15T13:55:30.930

Uh! Uprade seem to format previous /home

You could try to look if old root did hold something:

sudo mount --bind / /mnt
ls -l /mnt/home/cosmin
sudo umount /mnt

If ls command fail, there is nothing to found here.

Last thing to do, if your upgrade if fresh (recent format and few activities on /home)

Comment /home if /etc/fstab:

sed -re '/\s\/home\s/s/^/# /' -i /etc/fstab

Prepare to run without /home but with minimal user dir in /

sudo mount --bind / /mnt
sudo cp -a /etc/skel /mnt/home/cosmin
sudo chown -R cosmin: /mnt/home/cosmin

Reboot your system

Install testdisk and try to restore your files...

sudo aptitude install testdisk
testdisk /dev/sda7

... Sorry, good luck!

I can't access my Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos

2 Answers2