Re: [Usability] Trash observations

[Mark Knecht <markknecht gmail com>]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 1:01 PM, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 12:14 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi gmail com> wrote:
>> > On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 11:33 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
>> >> Anyway, I'd very much like to clean up my trash can so whether there's
>> >> any interest in the rest of this where are the files kept so that I
>> >> can go there in a terminal and erase them by hand.
>> >
>> > ~/.local/share/Trash in new versions of GNOME.  In older ones ~/.Trash
>> >
>> > --
>> > Mackenzie Morgan
>> > http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com
>> > apt-get moo
>> >
>>
>> Thanks. Strange place to put it but it's there, thanks.
>>
>> Now, I see both a files and an info directory. I guess I have to clean
>> them both up by hand as root?
>>
>> I'm not understanding how Gnome allowed me to move the files to trash
>> but won't let me move them out of trash. Or am I missing some sort of
>> Undelete function that I should be seeing but for some reason am not?
>
> It's an unfortunate side effect of how permissions work on
> Unix-like systems.  When you move folder X from foo to bar,
> all that happens is:
>
>  1) foo is changed to no longer point to X
>  2) bar is changed to point to X
>
> The only things that are modified are foo and bar.  Files
> and directories inside X are never touched, modified, or
> even looked at.
>
> Since trashing a folder just involved moving that folder,
> it's entirely possible to trash stuff that you don't have
> permissions to delete.  It sucks, but recursively scanning
> the directory to be trashed can be expensive.  Right now,
> trashing is a constant-time operation.
>
> --
> Shaun

OK, thanks. That makes perfect sense, even if it isn't perfectly sensible! ;-)

So as root I can safely delete the root-owned stuff in my user's trash
directory and I won't cause problems for Gnome? It won't get confused
if files suddenly disappear?

- Mark