All of my files are gone!

[Phlako]

Ubuntu 9.10 beta crashed on me this morning. I was never able to access my files. No worry I figured, I've been smart enough to store of my most important documents on Ubuntu One; aren't I a smart fellow. I reinstalled Ubuntu, went to package manager, reinstalled Ubuntu One, authorized my computer again, and guess what, there were no files in my account. I went right to the web and accessed my account from Firefox. No files. They were there, I have been accessing them and saving them into my Ubuntu One account all month. Could it be that they were only in a local file on my computer and never made it to the "cloud?" I know the Ubuntu One client for gnome was running on my computer, I saw the icon.

God knows for 3 years I have been an Ubuntu advocate. I've turned other people, at my University, on to Ubuntu. Even though I had to reinstall my OS more than most of the people I know, I was always willing to look for "work arounds", take the time to file bug reports and help people I know install Ubuntu and work out the bugs, but this was the last straw.
I really want to see Ubuntu work and succeed and I have been a strong proponent of Ubuntu, but I have to be honest, when I went to Ubuntu One this morning and found that my lab reports were gone, my physiology presentations had evaporated, my reading summaries vanished like Jimmy Hoffa, I came to the conclusion that when Windows 7 is released in a couple of weeks, after 3 years, I am going to have to leave Ubuntu. I can't think of any other way to protect my work. Not even Ubuntu One is reliable.
I hate to go but.
Anyways someone needs to know that my experience says that Ubuntu One might be a Bermuda Triangle for files.

[Eric Casteleijn (thisfred)]

Hi Phlako, I am very sorry to hear about this. Are you sure you signed into ubuntu one with the same account that you saved all the files with? I'm asking because the launchpad account you're using to report this bug with seems to have only been created today, and so it likely won't be the same one you've been using to save your work with...

[Eric Casteleijn (thisfred)]

Eh, strike that, the Ubuntu One accounts and the launchpad ones are no longer the same, I was mistaken. To be clear, you did see the files listed in the web UI before you reinstalled?

[Phlako (horwellr)]

No, I did not check the browser. I had been using Ubuntu One to store
documents as late as yesterday morning (I had a brief report due). I
established the account on October 5 and copied all of what I had from
JungleDisk (my Amazon S3 storage) to Ubuntu One. I did this because Ubuntu
One is integrated into Ubuntu and JungleDisk is not (JungleDisk can be a bit
fickle at times). I was considering moving everything over to an Ubuntu One
monthly subscription (the price is reasonable and JungleDisk does not permit
file sharing). I can't take that chance now. As finicky as JungleDisk can
be, I've never lost anything.
But to answer your question, no, because I have been able to see my files in
the Ubuntu One folder, under "Places," I assumed my files were on the
server. Is it possible they were not, that they were only stored locally?
How could this be if I had the client running with no indication of any
errors. My computer crashed after it froze up this morning. When I went to
reboot it. I recovered some most files using an installation CD. I never
even thought to check to see if my files were still on the Ubuntu One
server. They have been there and have opened up from there for the past 2
weeks. The one thing that was odd is that 3 days ago, when I went to open
up a series of presentations from the Ubuntu One file, OpenOffice claimed
that they files were damaged and asked me if it should repair them. I
selected "Yes" and it did so without any further problems. Do you think
there is any chance that when my computer locked up it may have deleted my
files on a remote server (I find that hard to believe). I was logged into
Ubuntu One but was not using it at the time. But one thing is certain, the
Ubuntu One client was open and running on this computer (I set it to start
automatically) and the Ubuntu One folder on this computer showed that the
files I expected to be in Ubuntu One were in Ubuntu One. Can I just close
out my account now or is there some reason I should wait?
Consider including an indicator light to the Ubuntu One applet like as
JungleDisk has. When I save a file, I can visually see the indicator light
flashing and I know my files are moving from the local file on my desktop to
the AWS server. There is even a log that I can refer to, to track activity.
Anyways, thank you very much for your quick response. I wrote in a moment
of anger (probably won't leave Ubuntu, but I'll never go back to or
recommend Ubuntu One). I had just finish reinstalling Ubuntu after
returning from classes this morning only to find my most important files
gone. If I had only lost music and pictures, I could have lived with that,
but coming up to midterm exams, losing my presentations, papers and notes
puts me in a bit of a spot. It means I have a long weekend ahead of me. I
did retrieve everything I had written before Oct 5 from my Amazon S3
account, so it is not a total loss.
Thank you once again for your quick response and I wish you the best of luck
with Ubuntu One.

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Eric Casteleijn <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> Eh, strike that, the Ubuntu One accounts and the launchpad ones are no
> longer t...

[Eric Casteleijn (thisfred)]

"""
But to answer your question, no, because I have been able to see my files in
the Ubuntu One folder, under "Places," I assumed my files were on the
server. Is it possible they were not, that they were only stored locally?
How could this be if I had the client running with no indication of any
errors
"""

This is possible, and in fact may be what happened, although it is very hard to be sure after a complete reinstall. The Ubuntu One folder is mostly just a regular local folder on your disk which is kept synchronized with our servers. If for some reason that synchronization failed silently we want to know about this and solve it as soon as possible, of course.

The Ubuntu One client stores logfiles locally that often hold vital clues when things go wrong. Alpha and Beta releases of software are meant to shake out such bugs, but it is very unfortunate if two such bugs in different packages coincided and caused you to lose your work. In general it is almost never necessary to do a complete reinstall of a linux system when things go wrong unless the hard disk is corrupted for some reason. I realize that that is probably a very cold comfort right now, but it may be something to remember for next time. When things go wrong during alpha or beta cycles, it's rarely just one person having the problem, so it pays to look online for solutions before resorting to drastic measures.

I regret not being to help you, but as things stand, there is very little we can do about this without the information in those logs, which were lost in the reinstallation.

[Malignus (wootchismo)]

I experienced the same thing today when I ran sudo apt-get upgrade which installed ubuntuone-client-gnome 1.0.2-0ubuntu2. Upon connecting, all my files both local and remote are gone.

[Joshua Hoover (joshuahoover)]

Malignus,

This is a very serious issue. Can you right-click on the Ubuntu One client and select "Report a Problem"? Also, please attach any files from the following directory with syncdaemon in the name: ~/.cache/ubuntuone/log

Thank you,

Joshua

[Duane Hinnen (duanedesign)]

If this is still an issue for you with the latest version of Ubuntu One
you can reopen this bug by setting the 'Status' to 'New'. The status of
a bug report can be modified by clicking on the current status in the
yellow line, which will reveal a sub menu. You can then set a new status
in the drop down box.

Please continue to report any bugs you may find in the future.

thank you,
duanedesign

[Alex Thurgood (alex-thurgood)]

I am resetting the status as this has just happened to me, apparently causing all of my business data to disappear. I have been using UbuntuOne to keep files in sync between 3 computers (all Ubuntu OS, either 9.10 or 10.04)) for about or about a month now, have taken out a subscription thinking it to be a reliable and trustworthy business solution. Clearly this is not the case. I shall be re-reading the terms of the contract carefully to ascertain liability. I imagine the logs are somewhere on my disk, but I am concerned that they may contain sensitive data, and obviously am not keen to see that appear on a public server such as this one.

Alex

[Alex Thurgood (alex-thurgood)]

BTW, Bug #583575 might be a duplicate of this report, similar behaviour with similar catastrophic results...

[Shane Fagan (shanepatrickfagan)]

Hi, are you still getting this error?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Ubuntu One Client because there has been no activity for 60 days.]