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rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,507  

No move to trash can on symbolic linked folders

System: luks encrypted Excalibur on sysvinit with Cinnamon DE.

I have split up my data into a static part and a dynamic part. The static part are all the documents, pictures and other data I have. No .dot files in there. Resides on a SSD and is decrypted and mounted to /mnt/HomeDaten during bootup. fstab entry is:

/dev/mapper/homedata_crypt	/mnt/HomeDaten	ext4	defaults	0	2

The folders on this drive are the ones used by xdg.

All .dot files reside in the normal /home/$USER folder. /home is on a separate drive, also luks encrypted. fstab entry is:

/dev/mapper/home_crypt    /home        ext4    defaults    0    2

I am using symbolic links to get access to the folders on the static drive. Typical command (in German):

ln -s /mnt/HomeDaten/$USER/Dokumente /home/$USER/Dokumente 

Problem:
In most folders I cannot move deleted files into the trashcan where I have the chance to review/undo the deletion. I must immediately delete any file. This is not only limited to the linked folders, I seem to have a partial problem in my /home too. Not everywhere. I haven't fully understood the systematics behind the behaviour yet. I played around and copied some empty trashcans on my HomeDaten folder and into the individual folders I have linked. No succes.

What is the reason and what can I do to fix the problem (keeping the setup)?

Last edited by rolfie (2026-06-22 15:50:10)

Dutch_Master

Member

Registered: 2018-05-31

Posts: 332  

Re: No move to trash can on symbolic linked folders

Can't properly explain it (don't use encrypted stuff) but it has to do with crossing boundaries between encrypted and non-encrypted file storage. Which has a root (sic ) in link nodes storing data blocks. Simply said: if you store a file, there's a table-of-sorts that keeps track of which data chunks are located on the various nodes of the drive. By removing the file, you unlink said data chunks to the original location in the file tree while making new links to these nodes from the Trash location.

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,507  

Re: No move to trash can on symbolic linked folders

Follow up, I haven't gotten any useful hint so far.

@Dutch_Master: thank you for trying to help. Unfortunately, all my drives are luks encrypted, no exception. That means that in operation they are decrypted, normal ext4 partitions.

Mercury

Member

Registered: 2024-11-14

Posts: 53  

Re: No move to trash can on symbolic linked folders

I use LUKS encryption but only one partition and trashing works normally. I suspect that like Dutch_Master said, there is an issue with "boundary crossing" from one partition to another.

Try it from command line:

gio trash /path/to/file

That might at least explain why it can't.