I was experiencing something strange yesterday: All my non-hidden files from my home directory disappeared for no reason (as far as I see)! My home directory was empty as if I would have executed a “rm etc,etc” (which I am pretty sure I did not)…
Everything else remained untouched (such as most of my files, which are only linked to my home-dir, other users home-dir…).
Did anybody experience that? I am using opensuse 11.4 since a few days, no big issues. I can’t tell exactly when that happend, so it is unclear to what that might be related. Probably while I was installing the “gnowsis” and “Tag the dragon” add-on to thunderbird…? Did I catch my first linux-virus?
On 03/17/2011 07:36 PM, urbade wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I was experiencing something strange yesterday: All my non-hidden files
> from my home directory disappeared for no reason (as far as I see)! My
> home directory was empty as if I would have executed a “rm -rf ~/”
> (which I am pretty sure I did not)…
> Everything else remained untouched (such as most of my files, which are
> only linked to my home-dir, other users home-dir…).
> Did anybody experience that? I am using opensuse 11.4 since a few days,
> no big issues. I can’t tell exactly when that happend, so it is unclear
> to what that might be related. Probably while I was installing the
> “gnowsis” and “Tag the dragon” add-on to thunderbird…? Did I catch my
> first linux-virus?
Did the partition containing /home actually get mounted? Please post the output
from ‘df’ and ‘cat /etc/fstab’.
Sorry for the German in it!
But it is definitely not a problem related to mounting, as all my hidden files were not affected… it really looks like rm -rf. And I didn’t use it at that time :-).
On 03/18/2011 01:36 AM, urbade wrote:
>
> Did I catch my first linux-virus?
none of my non-hidden files disappeared from my /home for no reason
yesterday…
i wonder, did yours come back or are they still disappeared?
usually, immediately after a default install (and even used for just a
few days) there won’t be many (if any) non-hidden files in the root of
your home directory…had you put some there? which and what kind?
if you do this are they still disappeared:
cd ~
ls
what about if you do this:
cd ~/Download
ls
cd ~/Music
ls
cd ~/Pictures
ls
cd ~/Documents
ls
cd ~/Videos
ls
maybe some of the files which disappeared from your home got
mysteriously moved to one of those directories?? maybe…
and no, you didn’t “catch” your first linux-virus because there are no
linux viruses…
now, you may have installed a root kit along with things you mention
installing, but that is a different thing…root kits only get in
through very poor operator security procedures…
–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP posted w/openSUSE 11.3, KDE4.5.5, Thunderbird3.1.8, nVidia
173.14.28 3D, Athlon 64 3000+]
“It is far easier to read, understand and follow the instructions than
to undo the problems caused by not.” DD 23 Jan 11
sorry I didn’t reply any more… Actually I wrote a nice long reply a three times, but was always kicked out by the opensuse forum, when I sent it – Arrr!
So now I try it again – by typing everything in LibreOffice.
So my point was not, that I lost any files I could not recover; Since I made a copy of all files, just before I installed opensuse 11.4, I simply copied everything back from the other partition.
So nothing is lost, I was just concerned who that could happen, as I am pretty sure I did not delete those files. But since nobody else heard about that problem, I must assume that I am still responsible for it , even though I don’t know how. And it never happened again, so all is fine…
Thanks for all of your support,
urbade
Btw: Even though my status says puzzled penguin, I am not new to Linux: I am using suse since 1999. I can say for sure, that my home folder is empty :). I was only to stupid to use the suse forum :sarcastic:
On 04/19/2011 04:36 PM, urbade wrote:
>
> sorry I didn’t reply any more… Actually I wrote a nice long reply a
> three times, but was always kicked out by the opensuse forum, when I
> sent it
there is a timer somewhere that decides you can only be logged in x
number of hours…it is stupid…i can be logged into my on line broker
for all day, no problem…and with Google docs or mail for like two
weeks…but here we have to live under the Novell iChain thumb, for a
little longer…
> Btw: Even though my status says puzzled penguin, I am not new to Linux:
> I am using suse since 1999. I can say for sure, that my home folder is
> empty :). I was only to stupid to use the suse forum :sarcastic:
>
neither Larry nor i used the web forum so we don’t see if you are a
“puzzled penguin” or a “Masterful Hacker” so don’t assume either of us
assumed you are, or were stupid…
i do think your post is impossible to trouble-shoot from afar…you say
you have been using openSUSE 11.4 for a few days, but you don’t say if
you upgraded or fresh installed, and from what…and, in either of those
cases it could be possible to have a glich show up…which is why we
recommend a backup of user data before moving to any level of openSUSE
to any other…and i’m happy you had one…
still, your post presents more questions than answers…