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The entry for the Music folder in my Home directory moved down below "+ Other Locations" in my places panel in Nautilus. When I tried to access it, I got an "OOPS" error message, "Unable to find the requested file. Please try again.". I edited my ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs file and found that the Music folder entry was incomplete. Despite repeatedly editing the file, following a reboot or logoff, the file reverts to the incorrect setting. I manually deleted the non-working "Music" link at the bottom of the sidebar, thinking there might be some duplicate entry that was causing a conflict, but this didn't fix the issue either. Below is the file with the incomplete entry:

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/"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"

As you can see, the location for the "Music" folder is missing. More than 7 times, I've edited the file as follows:

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"

The edited entry appears in Nautilus after the edit, but when I try to navigate to the Music folder from the sidebar, I get the "Oops! Something went wrong." message. After a reboot or logoff, the Music folder is gone every time. I've looked at the /etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf and /etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults files, and both appear to be normal. Here is the output from /etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults:

DESKTOP=Desktop
DOWNLOAD=Downloads
TEMPLATES=Templates
PUBLICSHARE=Public
DOCUMENTS=Documents
MUSIC=Music
PICTURES=Pictures
VIDEOS=Videos
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1 Answer 1

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You have most likely moved or deleted your Music folder hence the "Unable to find the requested file. Please try again." error message.

On every reboot ~/.config/user-dirs.conf is updated by xdg-user-dirs-update. Quoting man xdg-user-dirs-update:

Additionally, any configured directories that point to non-existing locations are reset by pointing them to the users home directory.

Run xdg-user-dirs-update --force to both reset ~/.config/user-dirs.conf using /etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults and to recreate any missing directories to stop this happening again.

It won't fix broken symlinks though, nor help if the symlink is into a partition which isn't mounted at boot.

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