File Management (Ubuntu or Others)

the first thing I would look for is to see if the fold is 'hidden', and then there is a switch in your explorer options to hide hidden directories and files... If there is, and it is turned on in your user account, but off in your wife's, then if you log in using her account, you wont' see your directory. simply go to the explorer options and change the setting..

assuming you are using windows.

Chris

& the title of the post is?

My personal bug a boo are pictures files folders

Vista seem to take it matters in it's own hands & puts things where it thinks they should go or to spontaneously make copies that may or may not really be copies or links

I await Bwires rebuttal & input

oops

I've been using Hardy and haven't seen the disappearing/reappearing file problem. The "find" command may help you since it can also perform operations on the search results. I suggest the following link for more info:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/find

Thanks, this looks like exactly what I need. I"ve bookmarked it and I'm going to make it routine to use it during all my file management tasks, whether something is missing or not.

The graphical interface has its benefits, it's very seductive to see things laid out as icons and drag them around. But the standard command line approaches that allow moving a whole set of files at once are more efficient, so I will get back to using them too.

I have been using Ubuntu for quite a few years, and never quite experienced this. As ChrisG points out, some files may be hidden, but in Ubuntu the style is generally that all hidden files begin with a ".". Usually, it requires active participation on the part of the saver to make a file hidden.

How full is your hard disk? Are you perhaps not waiting long enough for the file manager to update? Try minimizing the window and restoring it. Does this change the issue? (I have never encountered this problem with the normal file browser I use- Gnome desktop, I don't know the actual name of the browser- but I have found that I occasionally have issue when opening a *.pdf file- minimizing and maximizing the window for some reason gets the document to load. This may be an issue with the graphics drivers, but I am not sure).

It has been so long since I have had to use grep, I don't even remember the format- I would have to look it up. I do know that command line work requires much more accurate typing than I am normally capable of- which means it takes me a whole lot longer to use the command line than the GUI.

Which Ubuntu are you using? Is it up to date? Have you loaded some non-standard package that may have corrupted one of your standard packages?

And, there may be an issue with ownership of the files, although I have not encountered this- I can usually explore parts of the file system that are owned by the wife, although I may not be able to open the documents.

There may also be a memory corruption issue. Have you checked the integrity of your memory lately? Do you reboot the computer daily, or do you go weeks without rebooting? There are some strange little files in places like /dev and /etc and a few other places that Linux likes to rewrite occasionally, without bothering to get your permission. I don't know if this could be causing your problem with grep or not...

Hopefully, bwire will have some more insite...

The incident happened not long after a fresh reboot. I checked the hd it is only 39% used, so lots of memory available.

How do you check "memory integrity"?

I also have a recent problem with Evolution mail which I haven't tried to sort out yet. I made a change in the file structure - intending to get CR4 notices to appear in the same directory as other CR4 posts/messages - and now ALL my messages that would normally be in the inbox are also ending up in the CR4 folder. I have been too busy to spend any time figuring out why. Now that I think of it, there used to be a subdirectory to my CR4 mail where the notices went - it reappeared after the missing files did. I just looked for it now - it's gone again.

I haven't downloaded any programs except the updates.

I guess I'll start by looking through this list: http://ubuntuforums.org/tags.php?tag=missing+files

Your grub loader should have a memory check option- when you first boot, look down the list of various boot options.

When I tried to use Evolution, all my e-mails disappeared. It's much easier just leaving it all on line...

yeh, the Evolution interface struck me as pretty, but flakey from the start... oh well. It's no big deal.

Use some software that reads the S.M.A.R.T. data to make sure your hard disk is not starting to fail.....

If its OK, then do a surface scan/correction, then defrag.....