2

Damn! That's why someone said once, "Don't do other things while you are hungry". Basically, I was hungry and at that point of time I had to move a directory inside Desktop to another directory.

What I should have done:

mv Desktop/"directory1" /"directory2"

What I did:

mv Desktop/ ls (ls being the second argument)

I don't know why I did that. But it's already done and it's gone!

Now all I can see on my violet ubuntu Wallpaper are all the files and stuffs of my Home Directory and my Desktop is gone and moved to where, I don't know.

It's like, "Where do people go after they die?"

Is it possible to get back my Desktop somehow? Anyhow?

11
  • Off the top of my head, try # find / -name Desktop* and see what comes up Jul 23, 2016 at 17:17
  • Are you sure you didn't type mv Desktop / (move Desktop to the filesystem root directory /) - the command mv Desktop/ should have just errored out with a message like mv: missing destination file operand after ‘Desktop/’ Jul 23, 2016 at 17:18
  • that command should error out? damn you @steeldriver :D
    – Rinzwind
    Jul 23, 2016 at 17:18
  • I think I did mv Desktop/ls as far as I remember. Is it worse? Jul 23, 2016 at 17:19
  • 1
    @nickborti dont think. proof it! see my answer: history will tell you
    – Rinzwind
    Jul 23, 2016 at 17:21

1 Answer 1

7

First off: type

history

and look at the command you typed. Your desktop will be there where you moved it.


This

mv Desktop/ ls

then

mv ls Desktop

will fix it.


Adjust the command to what you see you did when typing history. When in doubt edit your question and add to it what you typed (or when even not sure of that post the last 20 odd lines history shows).

14
  • Unless ls was already a directory, of course, in which case you should mv ls/Desktop ~.
    – wchargin
    Jul 23, 2016 at 17:51
  • Also, cd ~ls ; mv * ~/Desktop is incorrect: presumably you mean cd ~/ls, and * will not match dotfiles.
    – wchargin
    Jul 23, 2016 at 17:52
  • @Rinzwind Your command worked and I can go to Desktop from terminal. But on startup it still shows the content of the Home Directory and not of the Desktop on the violet background. Jul 23, 2016 at 18:05
  • please check 2 things: 1. make sure it is called Desktop and it is inside /home/$USER/ and do a ls -l and it looks like drwxr-xr-x and is owned and group set to your username.
    – Rinzwind
    Jul 23, 2016 at 18:14
  • It is. I checked. But the Home is showing. What am I missing? Jul 23, 2016 at 18:21

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