Strange permissions and/or links to default directories in home folder (Music, Pictures, Public, Templates and Videos))

[Martin Randau]

Can't enter these folders. This is on an almost fresh install of Mantic.

martin@ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3:~$ cd Music
bash: cd: Music: Too many levels of symbolic links

martin@ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3:~$ ls -l
total 2988
drwxrwxr-x 3 martin martin 4096 Sep 18 12:44 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 martin martin 4096 Sep 19 13:48 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x 19 martin martin 4096 Sep 18 12:42 Documents
drwxr-xr-x 4 martin martin 4096 Sep 19 13:48 Downloads
drwx------ 5 martin martin 4096 Sep 18 16:24 Dropbox
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 18 Sep 19 13:56 Music -> /home/martin/Music
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 21 Sep 19 13:56 Pictures -> /home/martin/Pictures
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 19 Sep 19 13:56 Public -> /home/martin/Public
drwxrwxr-x 3 martin martin 4096 Sep 18 16:25 R
-rw------- 1 martin martin 3029503 Sep 19 14:08 references.bib
drwx------ 13 martin martin 4096 Sep 19 13:56 snap
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 22 Sep 19 13:56 Templates -> /home/martin/Templates
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 19 Sep 19 13:56 Videos -> /home/martin/Videos

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 23.10
Package: nautilus 1:45~rc-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 6.5.0-5.5-generic 6.5.0
Uname: Linux 6.5.0-5-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.27.0-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Tue Sep 19 14:19:32 2023
InstallationDate: Installed on 2023-09-18 (1 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 23.10 "Mantic Minotaur" - Daily amd64 (20230918)
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
usr_lib_nautilus:
 nautilus-dropbox 2019.02.14-1.2
 nautilus-extension-gnome-terminal 3.49.92-2ubuntu1

[Martin Randau (cmmrandau)]

User-dirs-dirs looked strange:

martin@ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3:~$ cat .config/user-dirs.dirs
# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run.
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/"

Changing it to:
martin@ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3:~$ cat .config/user-dirs.dirs
# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run.
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Public"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"

and running sudo xdg-user-dirs-update restored the folders with the correct icons. No idea what caused this in the first place.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. How did you install the system and using what locale? Do you have any specific userdir configuration (nfs, ad auth, ...)?

[Martin Randau (cmmrandau)]

I installed it with default settings and locale but I just remembered that after install I changed the locale to the English_Danish version. Since the folders are restored now I won't try to replicate the error, but it seems something went wrong when installing a new locale.
BW
Martin

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

alright, let's see if testing would show other issues, those packages didn't change in an decade though so it's a bit surprising

[Martin Randau (cmmrandau)]

It happened again:

martin@ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3:~$ ls -l
total 2992
drwxrwxr-x 3 martin martin 4096 Sep 18 12:44 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 martin martin 4096 Sep 19 13:48 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x 19 martin martin 4096 Sep 18 12:42 Documents
drwxr-xr-x 4 martin martin 4096 Sep 20 11:31 Downloads
drwx------ 5 martin martin 4096 Sep 19 14:56 Dropbox
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 18 Sep 20 11:32 Music -> /home/martin/Music
drwxrwxr-x 3 martin martin 4096 Sep 19 15:10 Pictures
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 19 Sep 20 11:32 Public -> /home/martin/Public
drwxrwxr-x 3 martin martin 4096 Sep 18 16:25 R
-rw------- 1 martin martin 3027062 Sep 19 14:37 references.bib
drwx------ 13 martin martin 4096 Sep 19 13:56 snap
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 22 Sep 20 11:32 Templates -> /home/martin/Templates
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 19 Sep 20 11:32 Videos -> /home/martin/Videos

but this time, .config/user-dirs.dirs is not changed, or the changes to correct I made before are still there, e.g., XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos".

In fact, even though I changed the locale to en_DK, Settings still show the default en_US and locale seems to be a mix?

martin@ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3:~$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_NAME=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The timestamp indicates those were created at 11:32, do you know what you did on the system around that time? is that when you turned the computer on/started the session?

[Martin Randau (cmmrandau)]

No, the laptop had been up and running for some time there. Here's journalctl from 11:32:

Sep 20 11:31:49 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:31:49 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 kernel: audit: type=1400 audit(1695202311.035:244): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" class="file" profile="snap.firefox.firefox" name="/etc/fstab" pid=6542 comm="firefox" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1000 ouid=0
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 dbus-daemon[1487]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.hostname1' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.hostname1.service' requested by ':1.172' (uid=1000 pid=6542 comm="/snap/firefox/3145/usr/lib/firefox/firefox" label="snap.firefox.firefox (enforce)")
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 systemd[1]: Starting systemd-hostnamed.service - Hostname Service...
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 dbus-daemon[1487]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.hostname1'
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 systemd[1]: Started systemd-hostnamed.service - Hostname Service.
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 kernel: audit: type=1107 audit(1695202311.383:245): pid=1487 uid=101 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj=unconfined msg='apparmor="DENIED" operation="dbus_method_call" bus="system" path="/org/freedesktop/hostname1" interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" member="GetAll" mask="send" name=":1.173" pid=6542 label="snap.firefox.firefox" peer_pid=7747 peer_label="unconfined"
                                             exe="/usr/bin/dbus-daemon" sauid=101 hostname=? addr=? terminal=?'
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 kernel: audit: type=1107 audit(1695202311.383:246): pid=1487 uid=101 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj=unconfined msg='apparmor="DENIED" operation="dbus_method_call" bus="system" path="/org/freedesktop/hostname1" interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" member="GetAll" mask="send" name=":1.173" pid=6542 label="snap.firefox.firefox" peer_pid=7747 peer_label="unconfined"
                                             exe="/usr/bin/dbus-daemon" sauid=101 hostname=? addr=? terminal=?'
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:31:58 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:31:58 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:32:07 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:32:07 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:32:07 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:32:07 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: meta_window_set_stack_position_no_sync: assertion 'window->stack_position >= 0' failed
Sep 20 11:32:08 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:32:08 Th...

[Martin Randau (cmmrandau)]

.config/user-dirs.dirs is rewritten at boot and logout/login and xdg-user-dirs-update after correcting the file and logout/login does not re-create the folders. It's not nautilus-dropbox since removing it does not stop the error from occurring. Attaching a log from a boot where before rebooting I had corrected user-dirs.dirs. When I logged in, my changes were gone and the folders were again links to themselves. Note that Pictures and Documents were not changed to links, probably because these were non-empty.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

it's weird but hard to tell what is rewritting the configuration. Do you have any non standard software you installed?

[Martin Randau (cmmrandau)]

No, this is a fresh Mantic minimal install from 18/9 with all software installed as snaps, except from MATLAB (propriety), RStudio (deb), thinlinc (deb) and nautilus-dropbox (deb).

As I wrote above, I noticed that locale seems to be a mix of en_US and en_DK and that even though I set it to en_DK in Settings, it reverts to en_US.

martin@ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3:~$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_NAME=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

[Martin Randau (cmmrandau)]

Seems like others recently have had the same issue on 22.04: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1483018/home-user-desktop-and-public-folders-show-as-type-link-broken-inode-symlink

Also on 20.04: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1482903/home-directories-turned-into-symbolic-links-without-telling-me-the-reason

These posts are recent ~1 month. Temporary fix is to have at least one file in the folders so as to avoid them being deleted.

[Gabriele (prodeguerriero)]

Dropping an update here, [same as I did on Stack Exchange](https://askubuntu.com/a/1490412/1105829):

I bumped into the same issue, and I was lucky enough to remember that the only change I made to my system today was to install [okular](https://github.com/KDE/okular).

The fix above works fine, as long as I don't open okular. If I do, and then reboot, I am back to square one.

Note that another user is suggesting that [adding hidden files to the folders prevents this from happening](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1488100/okular-breaking-home-directories-links).

I cannot find any mention of this bug in the KDE bug tracker, so maybe I'll try to add a new one in the coming days. I hope this helps.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks Gabriele for sharing that. @Martin, do you also have okular installed?

[Martin Randau (cmmrandau)]

Yes, in fact, I had just installed the snap version when the error occurred! Great catch, Gabriele! :D

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Reassigning to okular, it might be worth reporting the issue also upstream

[Oliver Calder (ocalder)]

I just encountered this issue as well when I installed the okular snap. It overwrote my Desktop directory to `Desktop -> /home/<myuser>/Desktop`, same with Public, and resulted in the contents of my home directory being visible on my desktop, which is not desirable obviously.

The version of okular I installed was:
latest/stable: 23.08.4 2023-12-10 (148)

I replaced the broken links with empty directories and rebooted, but `.config/user-dirs.dirs` was still incorrect (I hadn't yet uninstalled okular, but I had not opened it in a few days either).

I manually edited `.config/user-dirs.dirs` and ran `sudo xdg-user-dirs-update`, and my homedir contents are still visible on my desktop. I will reboot to see if the problem is resolved after this.

[Oliver Calder (ocalder)]

After a reboot, my homedir contents are no longer displayed on my desktop.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Mateusz Stachowski (stachowski-mateusz)]

This bug isn't a bug related to just one snap. It affects all snaps that set HOME to $SNAP_REAL_HOME.

It is a bug of snapd or the gnome-sdk as reported by Popey.

https://github.com/ubuntu/gnome-sdk/issues/188

https://github.com/popey/dosbox-staging-snap/issues/12

https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/setting-home-in-snap-to-user-home-seems-to-cause-all-empty-user-dirs-to-become-broken-symlinks/39463

[Mateusz Stachowski (stachowski-mateusz)]

Good news this bug has been resolved.

https://github.com/ubuntu/gnome-sdk/issues/188

The fix is currently in the candidate channel of gnome-42-2204 content snap. I can confirm from my own testing it indeed fixes this bug.

[Mateusz Stachowski (stachowski-mateusz)]

It turns out the bug isn't resolved.

I don't why I thought that Gnome extension will resolve the problem in KDE snap.

This is obviously a KDE program so the fix must be applied to the KDE extension.

[KDE (kde-community)]

Fix is in once merged: https://github.com/canonical/snapcraft/pull/4698/commits/221e23cc28896b1098ed4a0c646f00b4b61464f0