Trash does not work across partitions

[Robert Entner]

On Wednesday 14 December 2005 12:47, Tony Arnold wrote:
> Robert Entner wrote:
> > I have in my home folder a symlink to another partition.  When I use
> > Nautilus to 'Move to Trash' a file I access via this symlink I get
> > the error message:
> > Not on the same file system while deleting filename.
> >
> > Deleting permanently and via terminal work of course.
> >
> > This seems to be a Gnome/Nautilus bug to me, is this correct?
>
> I'd call it a limitation rather than a bug!
>
> As I understand it, Nautilus uses the 'mv' command to move files from
> their current directory to the Trash directory. mv within the same file
> system is very efficient as the file itself stays where it is
> physically. To implement mv accross paritition, one would have to copy
> the file and delete the old file with the risk of things going wrong
> part way through this process.
>
> Certainly in older Unixes, mv between paritions did not work. I've not
> tried it on more recent version of Linux.
>
> I guess one answer would be for Nautilus to keep a trash directory for
> each file system, and mv the file to there.

Hmm, thanks for the answer.  In this case it would be much better to 
display a 'could not move to trash, should the file be deleted 
permanently' message.  Otherwise a regular user can not delete the file - 
except when he activates the delete permanently option in Nautilus.

Burt