Ubuntu – Editing ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs does not permanently change user directory locations

14.04home-directorymountsymbolic-link

So it appears the same is happening to me on Ubuntu 14.04 as has previously been reported as a bug here

A difference though is I am trying to move the Home directory folders to a separate drive and am simply trying to follow the instructions here (scroll down to Configure Your Subfolders (Linux))

TL;DR: Attempt 1 and 2 are the important ones that really show my problem. Rest just there to show what else I've tried.

Attempt 1

I found a question with no accepted answer that has what appears to be precisely my problem.

Following the first suggested solution I tried using symbolic links:

cornelis@Bob:~$ ln -s /media/cornelis/Storage/Home/Documents /home/cornelis/Documents

This created the folder that linked to my other drive. I then tried modifying the user-dirs.dirs file as before such that XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents/Documents" where the symbolic link folder was created. I logged out and logged back in and presto! It worked! I see that the Documents shortcut links to $HOME/Documents/Documents, the user-dirs.dirs file is still appropriately modified. Looks like the change is permanent. Though less than ideal since I have to use a Documents inside a Documents folder. I cannot do something as follows that I had hoped would redirect the Documents folder directly:

cornelis@Bob:~$ ln -s /media/cornelis/Storage/Home/Documents /home/cornelis
ln: failed to create symbolic link ‘/home/cornelis/Documents’: File exists

I reboot. Disaster. Click image below.

The Documents folder is missing from the Places shortcut
The original Documents folder is now vanilla
The symbolic link inside the Documents folder is broken

Also, this reverted again: XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/"

I used xdg-user-dirs-update --force to reset Documents back to its default.

Attempt 2

Finally, I looked at the second suggested solution and I guess I can now safely assume that my problem is that my second drive isn't being mounted automatically upon boot. Since I have no issue creating symbolic links from logging off and logging in deduce I need an automatic systemwide mount. And this I'm afraid is where I'm pretty lost, seems quite the dense read though I did try to make heads and tails of it. I think I'm supposed to Edit Ubuntu's filesystem table, but I don't know what entry to add and the example they provide doesn't make it clear to me how I can automatically mount a drive on startup.

Here is my fstab file. Perhaps you can tell me what I need to modify here or how to arrive at knowing what to add here? My 1TB HDD drive that I want my Documents folder to be in is on sda3

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=<hidden> /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=<hidden> none            swap    sw              0       0
/Storage/16GiB.swap  none  swap  sw  0 0

Attempt 3

If I change XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents" to XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="/media/cornelis/Storage/Home/Documents" it becomes XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/" upon reboot.

Changing user-dirs.conf such that enabled=False I had hoped that

"When set to False, xdg-user-dirs-update will not change the XDG"

so something else is causing changes in user-dirs.dirs to be impermanent?

Attempt 4

I ran xdg-user-dirs-update after saving my changes in user-dirs.dirs. Nothing is displayed and a reboot results in the same problem as before. I also tried

cornelis@Bob:/etc/xdg$ xdg-user-dirs-update --force
Moving DOCUMENTS directory from /media/cornelis/Storage/Home/Documents to Documents

And sure enough, this results in what I changed in user-dirs.dirs. to revert back, which doesn't seem to make sense since the documentation states:

   --force
       Update existing user-dirs.dir, but force a full reset. This means:
       Don't reset nonexisting directories to HOME, rather recreate the
       directory. Never use backwards compatible non-translated names.
       Always recreate user-dirs.locale.

Attempt 5

This also didn't work:

cornelis@Bob:~$ xdg-user-dirs-update --set DOCUMENTS /media/cornelis/Storage/Home/Documents
cornelis@Bob:~$

Attempt 6

I Crawl into the fetal position and beg for help from Ask Ubuntu. Help me Ask Ubuntu, you are my only hope.

Best Answer

I figure it is bad form to leave my question without an answer. I eventually resolved all issues by following bessman's solution by the letter. He made it much clearer than the official docs how I was supposed to modify fstab - and now I also know how to create backups before I do so and got rid of the "documents inside a documents folder" issue - so triple props to his step-by-step solution. I wish I could upvote him twice since nothing else seemed to work.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – What’s the best way to add native-looking links to the NTFS data partition

I think I figured out what is the best way. Firstly I used tweak tool. Tweak tool used xdg thing. I just don't like it so much. Then I used symbolic links for all of my old directories from /home/can to /media/DataNtfs. For example; ln -s /media/DataNtfs/Music ~/Music. It was simple and useful until I wanted to sync my Documents directory with Ubuntu One. Ubuntu One syncs directories only in the home folder and don't work with links. Then I create empty directories in home like Documents, Downloads, Pictures etc.. and used fstab file to bind my old NTFS directories to the empty directories. This is part of the fstab file:

# binds
/media/DataNtfs/Music           /home/can/Music                  none    rw,bind 
/media/DataNtfs/Pictures        /home/can/Pictures               none    rw,bind 
/media/DataNtfs/Downloads       /home/can/Downloads              none    rw,bind 
/media/DataNtfs/Documents       /home/can/Documents              none    rw,bind 
/media/DataNtfs/Backups         /home/can/Backups                none    rw,bind 
/media/DataNtfs/Notes           /home/can/Notes                  none    rw,bind 
/media/DataNtfs/Other           /home/can/Other                  none    rw,bind 
/media/DataNtfs/Packages        /home/can/Packages               none    rw,bind 
/media/DataNtfs/Photos          /home/can/Photos                 none    rw,bind 
/media/DataNtfs/Videos          /home/can/Videos                 none    rw,bind 
/media/DataNtfs/WorkSpace       /home/can/WorkSpace              none    rw,bind

Bind works well. Now I can sync some of data directories with Ubuntu One. As if data directories are actually in the home directory. So I think 'the best way' is bind.

By the way; DataNtfs partition is always mounted by fstab and I never unmount it.

Ubuntu – How to make symlink to Desktop work correctly at startup on Ubuntu 14.04

I figured it out. The first time I restarted I hadn't entered the mount commands in fstab correctly. I had them as:

/dev/sdX pathtomounteddirectory

where the X is the proper suffix. (I used sudo gedit /etc/fstab in terminal to edit the fstab folder, and df -h to find the proper suffix and the pathtomounteddirectory.)

I had changed the fstab commands to:

/dev/sdX pathtomounteddirectory ext4 defaults 0 0

I verified the filesystem type using parted -l.

Anyways, my initial error had changed my user-dirs.dirs file found in my .config folder under my Home directory. (You can make it visible using ctrl + h outside terminal or using ls -a inside terminal). Once I reedited my user-dirs.dirs file, everything worked fine.