Home directory on desktop

[Colin Law]

On 11 April 2012 16:17, David Fletcher <dave at thefletchers.net> wrote:
> 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.

Is it possible that you accidentally moved them by dragging/dropping
in Nautilus?  This can be done surprisingly easily, especially when
using a touch pad I find.  Try, in a terminal
locate Desktop
and
locate Documents
to see if it shows the originals moved into a different folder.

Colin