Unpredictable drag and drop copy/move

[Andrew Byrd]

I had two windows open side by side (Nautilus AKA Files), both looking at directories on the same external USB hard drive (EXT4 filesystem). I was organizing files by click-selecting folders or drag-selecting several files in the right-hand window, then dragging them over to the left-hand window.

I would expect a move operation to result, as I am dragging between two directories on the same filesystem. However, sometimes (not every time, only occasionally) the drag and drop would result in copying files instead of moving them. A few times I caught this (I saw the + symbol on the target) and stopped the drag operation, then immediately repeated the drag-and-drop and got different results: a move instead of a copy.

By repeatedly performing the same drag operation (without completing it) I was able to reproduce the problem: occasionally the files would be copied instead of moved. This was not simply a glitch where the wrong cursor was displayed, there was actually a difference in behavior. I am certain of this because after one such operation both the original and the copy existed separately, and the copy operation took a significant amount of time with visual feedback about copy progress (unlike a move which is instantaneous).

Once when dragging 7 files, I saw that the cursor indicated an imminent move instead of copy, suddenly there were 9 dotted file outlines instead of 7. Repeating the operation resulted in a move, and there were only 7 dotted file outlines visible. That is to say, when an erroneous copy was about to happen, the number of files to be copied appeared to increase beyond the number I intended to move.

This problem was consistently accompanied by another possibly independent problem: the dotted file outlines did not disappear after the copy/move completed.

Another possibly irrelevant detail: in between the two Nautilus windows, and behind them in the stacking order, was a terminal window. My mouse was often passing over this terminal window as I dragged from the right hand Nautilus window to the left hand one. The mouse cursor that is displayed when dragging files across this window (to indicate the potential action of copying the file path as text into the terminal window) is similar to the one that indicates a move operation rather than a copy. I can imagine the mouse cursor just being accidentally stuck in the + state as it enters the target Nautilus window, but that doesn't explain the actual copy operation happening. I would not expect the cursor to represent any program state that could bleed between these two applications.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
Package: nautilus 1:3.14.2-0ubuntu9
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.19.0-18.18-generic 3.19.6
Uname: Linux 3.19.0-18-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.17.2-0ubuntu1.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME-Classic:GNOME
Date: Mon Jun 1 09:24:26 2015
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/nautilus
GsettingsChanges: b'org.gnome.nautilus.list-view' b'default-column-order' b"['name', 'size', 'type', 'date_modified', 'date_accessed', 'owner', 'group', 'permissions', 'mime_type', 'where']"
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-05-02 (29 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-GNOME 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Release amd64 (20150422)
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Rafael Keller Tesser (rktesser)]

The bug has already been reported upstream back in January:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=742463

There were, however, no replies to the bug report.