[Swlug] Mint difficulties

[Colin Law]

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 at 11:19, DrBillBass via Swlug <swlug at mailman.lug.org.uk>
wrote:

> Hi team,
>
> I've recently tried to install Slack on my laptop which runs on Linux Mint
> Mate 19, and the instructions for Linux, using the terminal, were to type
> sudo apt remove slack-desktop, which I did, and then to type
>
>    1. rm -rf ~/.config/Slack
>    2. I've tried this to no avail, but what has happened is that I have
>    now lost all access to my C drive, all documents etc.
>
> It's ItIt's as though the Linux I now have is a new installation, with all
> the files on my hard drive non-existent. I've also tried restoring an
> earlier snapshot but that doesn't seem to help either.
>
> So, what next?
>

Sadly I suspect that you may have inserted a space after the /, which will
have emptied ~/ which is your home directory.  rm -rf is a horribly
dangerous command and I try never to use it in this way.  I know it doesn't
help you but for anyone else I would always do
cd ~/.config
rm -rf Slack
which is much less dangerous.  If that is what has happened then I am
afraid there is little you can do other than wait till you can get at your
backups.

rm -rf is even more dangerous when used with sudo, I am not even going to
type the full command but if one were trying to remove /etc/somefolder for
example did sudo rm followed / etc/somefolder (with an accidental space
after the /) then that would erase the whole disc partition.

Colin


>
> Hoping to get myself out of this mess. Fortunately, most of my files are
> backed up onto a drive at home (I'm not at home at the moment)
>
> Thank you 🙂
>
> Bill Thomson
>
> I
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