So it appears the same is happening to me on Ubuntu 14.04 as has previously been reported as a bug here
A difference though is I am trying to move the Home directory folders to a separate drive and am simply trying to follow the instructions here (scroll down to Configure Your Subfolders (Linux))
TL;DR: Attempt 1 and 2 are the important ones that really show my problem. Rest just there to show what else I've tried.
Attempt 1
I found a question with no accepted answer that has what appears to be precisely my problem.
Following the first suggested solution I tried using symbolic links:
cornelis@Bob:~$ ln -s /media/cornelis/Storage/Home/Documents /home/cornelis/Documents
This created the folder that linked to my other drive. I then tried modifying the user-dirs.dirs file as before such that XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents/Documents"
where the symbolic link folder was created. I logged out and logged back in and presto! It worked! I see that the Documents shortcut links to $HOME/Documents/Documents
, the user-dirs.dirs file is still appropriately modified. Looks like the change is permanent. Though less than ideal since I have to use a Documents inside a Documents folder. I cannot do something as follows that I had hoped would redirect the Documents folder directly:
cornelis@Bob:~$ ln -s /media/cornelis/Storage/Home/Documents /home/cornelis
ln: failed to create symbolic link ‘/home/cornelis/Documents’: File exists
I reboot. Disaster. Click image below.
- The Documents folder is missing from the Places shortcut
- The original Documents folder is now vanilla
- The symbolic link inside the Documents folder is broken
Also, this reverted again: XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/"
I used xdg-user-dirs-update --force
to reset Documents back to its default.
Attempt 2
Finally, I looked at the second suggested solution and I guess I can now safely assume that my problem is that my second drive isn't being mounted automatically upon boot. Since I have no issue creating symbolic links from logging off and logging in deduce I need an automatic systemwide mount. And this I'm afraid is where I'm pretty lost, seems quite the dense read though I did try to make heads and tails of it. I think I'm supposed to Edit Ubuntu's filesystem table, but I don't know what entry to add and the example they provide doesn't make it clear to me how I can automatically mount a drive on startup.
Here is my fstab
file. Perhaps you can tell me what I need to modify here or how to arrive at knowing what to add here? My 1TB HDD drive that I want my Documents folder to be in is on sda3
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=<hidden> / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=<hidden> none swap sw 0 0
/Storage/16GiB.swap none swap sw 0 0
Attempt 3
If I change XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
to XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="/media/cornelis/Storage/Home/Documents"
it becomes XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/"
upon reboot.
Changing user-dirs.conf such that enabled=False
I had hoped that
"When set to False, xdg-user-dirs-update will not change the XDG"
so something else is causing changes in user-dirs.dirs
to be impermanent?
Attempt 4
I ran xdg-user-dirs-update
after saving my changes in user-dirs.dirs.
Nothing is displayed and a reboot results in the same problem as before. I also tried
cornelis@Bob:/etc/xdg$ xdg-user-dirs-update --force
Moving DOCUMENTS directory from /media/cornelis/Storage/Home/Documents to Documents
And sure enough, this results in what I changed in user-dirs.dirs. to revert back, which doesn't seem to make sense since the documentation states:
--force Update existing user-dirs.dir, but force a full reset. This means: Don't reset nonexisting directories to HOME, rather recreate the directory. Never use backwards compatible non-translated names. Always recreate user-dirs.locale.
Attempt 5
This also didn't work:
cornelis@Bob:~$ xdg-user-dirs-update --set DOCUMENTS /media/cornelis/Storage/Home/Documents
cornelis@Bob:~$
Attempt 6
I Crawl into the fetal position and beg for help from Ask Ubuntu. Help me Ask Ubuntu, you are my only hope.