Home directory on desktop

[David Fletcher]

On Wed, 2012-04-11 at 09:45 +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 09:10:12AM +0100, Colin Law wrote:
> > On 11 April 2012 00:04, David Fletcher <dave at thefletchers.net> wrote:
> > > I'm running 12.04 on my Toshiba NB520.
> > >
> > > I can't see how it can be associated, but I was trying out unpacking the
> > > tar file from my network backup on the NB520 into a directory called
> > > ~/BackupTest/. When I was done, I deleted the contents of BackupTest.
> > > Like I say, I can't see how it could be associated but then I saw that
> > > ~/Documents/ was gone along with the netbook copy of my Revelation
> > > wallet file and the contents of ~/ are now being displayed on the
> > > destop.
> > >
> > > Putting the Documents directory back was easy, but I can't see how to
> > > get the desktop to refrain from showing the contents of ~/.
> > 
> > Did you loose ~/Desktop also?  If so try putting that back.  I don't
> > know whether that might cause the problem but I don't want to try it
> > and find out.  ~/Desktop is the folder that is supposed to be shown on
> > the desktop.
> > 
> Only if ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs says so.
> 
> -- 
> Chris Green
> 

Yes I did also lose ~/Desktop. Putting it back had no effect.

I then edited ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs so that the first active line is
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
and now the desktop looks normal again.

Thanks for that folks.

Now I ask, how the hell could this have happened? I'm sure the only
deletions I did were the .tar.gz file and the unpacked home directory
with the backups from my desktop PC/server/son's PC, and they were
inside ~/BackupTest, which is still there.

Any ideas?

Any similar experiences?

Dave