[KDE] PANIC After installing main KDE update. Most of my home folders have vanished

[sparxz]

After installing main KDE update(incl for flathub), via Discovery.
(Backed up my packages first with Muon), into /home/user/ (that file is now gone too !).

Most of my home folders have vanished, including all files, and eg with message:
The file or folder /home/user/Desktop does not exist.

Has permissions been changed, has mount points been changed,
or has KDE update deleted my files ?

NB KDE Plasma setting look to be unchanged/ as were before update.

Muon keeps update history. But does Discovery update ? If so where,

and can I undo/recover from error it made ?

Months or work just gone !!

Thanks.

[GreyGeek]

Elvis has left the building, but you didn't mention what building (version) he was in. Sorry.

Did you make any backups BEFORE you updated? If not, wny?

I don't use Discover, but a quick check didn't show any option to give a list of packaged added and removed, like Muon or Synaptic does. Besides, even if you had that list it would be painfully laborious and error prone to manually remove added packages and install removed ones in an attempt to restore your system to what it was before that update.

It would be a LOT easier to re-install the distro and the applications you were using then, IF you have backups on other storage media, pull the config files and data files from those backups. But, I'll assume you didn't back up so that option is out.

It's a hard lesson to learn but the serious use of computers requires that sooner or later one learns that lesson.

My approach is to install Kubuntu on top of BTRFS as the root file system. Then I create snapshots of / and /home and save them on other media, like my 2nd SSD or my old spinner. Within 3 to 5 minutes, manually, I can restore my root and home accounts to a previous snapshot and reboot.

IF I didn't use BTRFS I'd install TimeShift and use it, although in your case I'm not sure TimeShift would have survived the massive erasures that took place on your system. (Did the superblocks get corrupted or swapped?)

[sparxz]

SOLVED After installing main KDE update. Most of home folders have vanished

Thanks for reply.

First got my data back.

This was on:
Operating System: Kubuntu 19.10
KDE Plasma Version: 5.16.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.62.0
Qt Version: 5.12.4
Kernel Version: 5.3.0-29-generic
OS Type: 64-bit; Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-6300U CPU @ 2.40GHz; Memory: 7.2 GiB of RAM

Second, you are right about back ups, as Linux, KDE is not perfect(nothing is).
Hardware can fail, and manufacturers warn us it can.

Third, found my configurations(for paths) were changed after that update
Something that should not have happened.
ALSO. Found KDE where randomly moved my data to, and moved back.

The correct default paths are shown here, and how to change:
https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kde-w...ths/index.html

Lastly.
Not sure how this could be reported as a bug, unless it has happened to many others.
The fright, will get be back into back up discipline.

After loosing data before from BTRFS, I would NEVER use it again. To me, its Russian roulette,
and people boasting how many times, they have 'not' been shot, as they pull the trigger again.
I hope to use ZFS for roll-back, as it has a long development history(longer than BTRFS).

Thanks & hope this helps someone else.

[kyonides]

That's why I keep using ye good olde EXT4! It's been reliable since day one.

I almost thought it might have made your files invisible by prepending a dot to the corresponding folder but I'm glad that the outcome wasn't as bad as expected.

[Don B. Cilly]

Backup-wise, I find
rsync -a --exclude '/media' / /media/not/R2D2/Backup/whatever/
fast and efficient enough.
If I want to have separate "snapshots" I just change the destination to whatever-date-time.

Not resource-intensive, can run minimised, no need to use fancy FSs, totally KISS.
I just use --exclude '/media' because otherwise it backs up the removable disk too - with all the other backups on it

[GreyGeek]

Thanks for reply.

First got my data back.

This was on:
Operating System: Kubuntu 19.10
KDE Plasma Version: 5.16.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.62.0
Qt Version: 5.12.4
Kernel Version: 5.3.0-29-generic
OS Type: 64-bit; Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-6300U CPU @ 2.40GHz; Memory: 7.2 GiB of RAM

Second, you are right about back ups, as Linux, KDE is not perfect(nothing is).
Hardware can fail, and manufacturers warn us it can.

Third, found my configurations(for paths) were changed after that update
Something that should not have happened.
ALSO. Found KDE where randomly moved my data to, and moved back.

The correct default paths are shown here, and how to change:
https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kde-w...ths/index.html

Lastly.
Not sure how this could be reported as a bug, unless it has happened to many others.
The fright, will get be back into back up discipline.

After loosing data before from BTRFS, I would NEVER use it again. To me, its Russian roulette,
and people boasting how many times, they have 'not' been shot, as they pull the trigger again.
I hope to use ZFS for roll-back, as it has a long development history(longer than BTRFS).

Thanks & hope this helps someone else.

Odd. I've been using BTRFS for almost 5 years without a single hiccup, and that includes switching from a singleton to RAID1 with multiple storage devices, back to two storage devices, then back to a Singleton, all while using btrfs balance to rebalance between changes. I've also shrunk the BTRFS ROOT FS, squeezed down the partition, and resized BTRFS back up to fill the partition. All without problems. I do LOTS of experimentation which involves making massive changes to my system, like installing P2P file systems, different IDE's and compilers, various languages, etc., to try them out or just become familiar with them, and then I restore my previous @ and @home and reboot. Before every update I create @ and @home snapshots to avoid problems with problematic updates, which aren't too often but one has to be careful.

I would NEVER run a Linux distro without BTRFS. Note, also, that I never used compression.

Common myth: ZFS is older than BTRFS, therefore it is better developed.
Facts:
ZFS was initially released in June of 2006.
ZFS port to Linux was begun in 2008.
BTRFS first appeared in the kernel in March of 2009.
Oracle acquires ZFS in 2010 and closes down contributions to the CDDL version of ZFS
OpenZFS was begun in 2013 and the first stable release on Linux was announced that same year
BTRFS was declared stable in 2013
Ubuntu adds BTRFS as a root filesystem option in their 11.04 release, April, 2011.
Ubuntu adds ZFS as a root filesystem option in their 20.04 release, April 2020.

BTRFS will run fine in 1 to 2 GB of RAM but I'd never run it on a system with less than 6GB for performance reasons. I currently run it on a 12 year old Acer V3-771G with an Nvidia GT-650M GPU and 16 GB of RAM. I have a working Plasma desktop in about 15 seconds from a cold boot.

$ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 2.611s (kernel) + 8.095s (userspace) = 10.706s
graphical.target reached after 8.085s in userspace


ZFS is a little more RAM intensive. I'd never use it with less than 32GB of RAM, preferable ECC RAM.
I can make many snapshots of my BTRFS system and restore from any one of them without losing any of the others. In ZFS I am told that you need to clone your system before you create a snapshot in order to do the same thing. I don't know what that entails, but it probably requires a lot of space on the storage medium.

ZFS has dozens of setting that the admin can tweak and tune. BTRFS has very few, probably around half a dozen. I've never tweaked any of them, and don't even know what they are, or what they are used for. I just make snapshots for backups, restore when I want, and let the system do its fstrim command via a systemd timer unit, which was set up automatically, once a week or so.

I suspect that Canonical will do as great a job getting ZFS ready a a filesystem option as they did for BTRFS, so I wouldn't be afraid to use it. But, BTRFS is so simple, reliable and easy to use why switch. I suspect that if BTRFS gave you grief then ZFS may give you even more grief because it is more complicated.

If you want to play with ZFS and have some USB sticks to use as additional storage you can install it on Kubuntu 18.04 by following the low down given here.

[sparxz]

Yes, have to say EXT4, never let me down.
But this was a Kubuntu KDE issue, that made bizzare changes to path configurations,
inculding moving large amounts of data to different folder.

But I like the idea of a quick return to safety parachute, after slipping off an operating-system update-cliff-edge !

Used to experiment loads, and skated on the thin ice.
Now stability, security, and reliability, figure as 'most' important.

Thanks for your thought on this issue ;-)

[jglen490]

ext4, btrfs, or the rest of the alphabet - always make routine external backups. And by external, the target drive should be a removable, USB attached drive. And by routine, plan what needs to be backed up, how often, and then make it a habit!

[jlittle]

Yes, have to say EXT4, never let me down.

It's not ext4 that causes trouble, rather the fallible user. ext4 is no help for, say, overuse of rm.

btrfs can make recovering from mistakes quick and painless.

[oshunluvr]

Funny, but of no real value - I've never lost any data using BTRFS. I have with EXT and to a lesser extent with XFS. Hardware failures do not count.

To add to what jlittle states, BTRFS makes backups and data transfer so easy and painless you really don't have to think much about it and it doesn't get in your way. IME, the required external backup tools and the hours of time it takes to use them, and the utter lack of snapshot capability, show EXT4 to be what it is - an outdated stop-gap file system. Even XFS has planned improvements coming. EXT4 was created to update the aging EXT2/3 FS so it could continue to be used while adding a few modern features until a better file system is available. It's "stable" in the linux meaning of "no longer being developed." Still, there are a couple things EXT4 does better than BTRFS at this point in time. If you are a simple user and do your maintenance EXT is fine.