Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Rhythmbox quietely deletes files

[Sean McNamara <smcnam gmail com>]

Hi,

On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 9:48 AM, Ingo Fründ <ingo fruend googlemail com> wrote:
> Dear Rhythmbox developers
>
> I have recently switched to Rhythmbox as my default music player. Before
> that, I was using amarok. I have to say, I like rhythmbox: The file
> browsing view fits well with the way I think about music and I really
> appreciate the playlist management. So congratulations on the great
> work.
>
> There is one serious drawback, though. Since I use Rhythmbox, it happens
> relatively regularly that music files get lost. In some cases, they have
> just been moved to a different folder, but in some cases, they have
> quietely been deleted. This is very annoying. In particular, because it
> is not always possible to replace these lost files.
>
> I wonder if this is a known issue? Unfortunately, I did not find a
> simple scenario that allows me to replicate the error reliably. Are
> there any things that I didn't think about? I would be happy, if it was
> possible to switch rhythmbox to a "readonly" mode. Is that possible? Did
> I miss something?

I have never heard of Rhythmbox deleting files without the user's
consent, nor moving them. The only writing it is capable of doing, by
design, is to modify the tags of files if you edit the tags in the
Properties window of a track. I think it *can* also delete files, but
that has to be done manually in the UI, and has a confirmation dialog
box.

I suspect it's not Rhythmbox but some other program, or some other
action you are taking that is resulting in the files being deleted.
Also, make sure the files just didn't get renamed, or the file
corrupted (the latter could be indicative of disk or filesystem
failure).

If you want to rule out the program itself as being the culprit, just
change the DAC permissions on all of your music. Run rhythmbox as your
regular (non-root!) user, but set the owner of the files to root:root,
and set the permissions so that only the owner can write (e.g. 644).
Manually test in the shell by doing something like: touch
some_file.mp3 as the same user that runs Rhythmbox. You should get
permission denied.

Once you accomplish that, it should be impossible (short of a virus,
exploit, or a malicious copy of Rhythmbox you've somehow obtained
outside the normal distribution channels) for Rhythmbox to have any
effect on the files. You shouldn't be able to edit the tags in the UI,
either.

Like I said, I am 100% positive that your situation is entirely unique
to you, as I have never heard of anything like this before coming from
normal Rhythmbox functionality (nor can I recall Rhythmbox ever having
a bug in the mainline source code that would cause files to be
randomly deleted). In all likelihood, it has to be something in your
environment, whether it be the filesystem, disk failure, or some sort
of malicious code.

In closing, I feel like I need to explain that it is impossible for
the Rhythmbox maintainers to address a bug that we cannot reproduce.
Since the conditions under which the deletions occur have not been
isolated by you, then it is very likely that we won't be able to
isolate them, either (considering that probably no-one else besides
you who is reading this message has ever encountered this problem
before). So unless you can troubleshoot the problem as I described
above and demonstrate that Rhythmbox is actually performing the
deletions, and that you do not have any malicious code on your system,
there is very little we can do to help besides direct you to standard
troubleshooting techniques for issues such as disk failure and
filesystem corruption. But those issues are significantly off-topic
for this list...

Also: it -might- be useful to state exactly which Rhythmbox version
you're using, which operating system (including distro and
architecture), as well as any customizations you've done to install
third-party software outside of your distro's officially-approved
distribution channels.

-Sean


>
> Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot,
>
> Ingo
>
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