duplicate directories in /home

[Florin Andrei]

Using 11.04 Natty on a laptop, with classic view (not Unity).

I logged in to my account, only to be greeted by a "fresh looking" 
account. The desktop settings went back to default, sound scheme, etc.

At first I thought it's a file system error, or the /home encryption 
that went bad. But then I noticed the directories that begin with a 
capital letter (Desktop, Documents, Pictures...) are now duplicate 
(listed twice if I do "ls") and empty. Also, there's a slight pause 
after I enter my password, as if something is waiting or looking for 
something else.

Luckily, I keep most of those directories symlinked to Dropbox (they 
were symlinks to somewhere else before the problem occurred), so the 
content is not lost - except for Desktop, and I do have some files there 
I'd like to recover if possible.

The rest of my /home directory does not seem to be affected. The system 
seems normal otherwise.

What could have gone wrong, to cause reinitializing these account 
folders? I looked briefly through the logs but couldn't see anything 
obvious yet.

Any ideas how to recover the content in Desktop?

-- 
Florin Andrei
http://florin.myip.org/