Re: [Usability] Trash observations

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 13:05 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
> 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?

Shouldn't cause any problems.  The info subdirectory of the
Trash directory contains metadata about the trashed files.
Basically information about when the file was trashed and
where to restore it to, IIRC.  Deleting the files by hand
shouldn't cause any problems.  I've done it before.

--
Shaun