Prompt for where to save file defaults to /home instead of /home/user

[Eric Appleman]

Binary package hint: transmission

/home is writable and if the user doesn't change the path, the torrent won't download at all.
---
Architecture: i386
CheckboxSubmission: b8398b21075a3a8723b2ba20478c4f9e
CheckboxSystem: 703a6ca1eefae989daaf40c6bb6aa94a
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha i386 (20091218.1)
Package: transmission 1.80~b1-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-9.13-genusername
Tags: lucid
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-9-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

apport information

[Charles Kerr (charlesk)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

When I run Transmission for the first time, the default setting is to save torrents to ~/Downloads, rather than /home. Are you saying that Transmission defaulted to /home the first time around? Or that you changed it to /home and Transmission should have given a warning?

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

It defaults to /home for me both on a fresh install and after clearing the transmission folder in .config

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Does it do the same in the guest user account?

[Charles Kerr (charlesk)]

A couple of thoughts:

1. This sounds similar to bug 505861, but I'm not sure yet whether they're related.

2. If settings.json is somehow corrupt, Transmission may be using your home directory as a fallback value. Eric, could you please run your ~/.config/transmission/settings.json file through a JSON parser (such as http://json.parser.online.fr/) to check for parse errors?

3. Does this problem persist when you use Transmission in the guest user account?

4. Are you using a new install of Lucid, or did you upgrade on top of Karmic? *If* this is the same as ticket 505861, it's possible that Transmission or GTK+ are eating the last subfolder out of a path.. that is, it's possible that 505861's /home/shankao/Download is being truncated as /home/shankao, and your /home/yourname is being truncated as /home. The user in ticket 505861 reported upgrading Lucid on top of Karmic.

5. To test the theory in the previous bullet item -- if you tell Transmission to save to /home/yourname/Desktop, does it try to save to /home/yourname instead? If you tell Transmission to save to /home, does it try to save to / ? etc.

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

I cleaned my /home configs a few days ago and now this bug is a Worksforme.