Data loss: housekeeping plugin deletes files that aren't in /tmp
Submitted by Tim Cuthbertson
Link to original bug (#730223)
Description
Thankfully, in my case most files were under source control so I only lost a small amount of data due to this bug. But needless to say, this bug could be catastrophic in some circumstances.
I'm running fedora 20, gnome-settings-daemon-3.10.2-3.fc20.x86_64
To reproduce:
$ mkdir ~/Desktop/some_files $ touch ~/Desktop/some_files/important.txt $ ln -s ~/Desktop/some_files/ /tmp/some_files
$ ll ~/Desktop/some_files/ -rw-r--r-- 1 tim tim 0 May 16 08:52 important.txt
$ dbus-send --session --dest=org.gnome.SettingsDaemon --print-reply /org/gnome/SettingsDaemon/Housekeeping org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Housekeeping.RemoveTempFiles method return sender=:1.10 -> dest=:1.192 reply_serial=2 $ ll ~/Desktop/some_files/
(all gone)
Why did I do this?
I was testing some development stuff, in which I was copying files into a location under /tmp. Then I decided to just use a symlink, so I didn't need to keep the files in sync. Some time later (after a periodic task kicked in, I assume) git status
shows that a startling number of files have simply disappeared from my workspace. Not all of them (for some reason the .git directory itself did not get removed), but enough to terrify me.
Version: 2.40.x