XDG directories mangled names #254

Basic information

TDE version: R14.1
Distribution: Debian Buster and Bullseye
Hardware: amd64

Description

After fresh installation of TDE on Debian Buster I install the Bulgarian language and copy over my home directory.
Unfortunately the XDG directory names are mangled in Konqueror.
When I delete them they are reqriated immediately again with mangled names
When I use TCC and press "Apply" they are created with ???? ??????

To me it looks as some kind of regression, because on the Desktop PC that was installed 2005-2006 and constantly upgraded the names are properly shown in cyrillic.

Steps to reproduce

Fresh install Debian
Install some language pack like Bulgarian
create fresh user into the new language
XDG directories show mangled

Screenshots

attached shows mangled dir names and ??? are after applying from TCC

img64.jpg

37 KiB

Hi Emanoil,
the fact that this happens only on some (one?) machines and not all, suggests it may be a local issue rather than a regression. It would be too big of a regression for having gone unnoticed all this time, if you get what I mean :-)
To help debugging this, what happen with a new user instead of copying over the whole home folder? Also, any difference in TDE version between a good machine and the one showing issues?

Hi,
yes I get what you mean. My intentionwas not to raize the bug, but rather to solve it for the local user

In fact I tested now with 2 new users

created user and after log in completed the wizard setting language and region
created user and logged in after taking the defaults from the wizard. Then I setup language and region

So far I could not reproduce it

I copied ~/.trinity to one of the users and again all looked fine.

So why on the USB it is behaving differently?!

BR

Hi Emanoil,
so it is a local bug and only when using a USB stick? May it have something to do with write permission to USB? or with the USB file system in use? or the size of it?
Also if you use the same USB, are you able to reproduce it again? or was it a one off event?

I tested on the same USB stick. With new users is fine, so it must be something related to my profile that I copied from the desktop.

I can reproduce it only in one user (with the foreign profile).

Ok, makes sense. Perhaps are you using NFS drives? I remember Slavek has issues with NFS drives and some other things in recent distros, although I don't remember the exact details. But it could not mount drives with udisks2 in a new installation for whatever reason. Maybe it's something similar.

I do not remember exactly how I copied the files. I have the home on NFS share - this is true. It could be I copied them from there, so I will try to copy the directory again in some other way and report back.

thanks for the hint

No problem. I think Slavek's was missing a specific package and that was causing the issue. But I don't remember more details.

I have now tar cJvf on the machine where the home is, then scp and tar xJvf on the PC/Notebook, but again directory names are mangled

interesting indeed. It seems something in your home folder triggers this behavior.
You would probably have to try to progressively copy part of your setup and see when the names get mangled.

Hi Emanoil,
any update on this issue? Should we keep this open or close it?

Hi Michele,
I do not know what to do with it.
Keep open or close, it does not resolve the issue.
Could be that copying iscausing the problem and creating from within the TDE for some reason does not cause the issue.

Hi Emanoil,
we can keep the issue open, that is not a problem. But it would be good to understand if this is a TDE issue or a local issue caused by something else.
As I mentioned in a previous comment, you coud try this:

create new user with same name in new computer
copy over some of your existing config
verify if everything works fine. If so go back to 2. and copy more stuff. when it breaks, you will have a narrowed list of items to look at.
Hopefully this way you can identify where the problem comes from.

@deloptes, could you clarify, what those directory names are supposed to be in bulgarian and english? Also could you provide ls -l output from the command line?

the one that you probably do not understand.

on the daily (original PC) in konqueror

in the command line

Видео
Документи
Изображения
Музика
Публични
Шаблони

not so on the new installation

The meaning is

Видео Video
Документи Documents
Изображения Pictures
Музика Music
Публични Public
Шаблони Templates

image.png

51 KiB

image.png

75 KiB

I've mostly wanted to make sure, that we are talking about xdg-user-dirs, no just it's subset like Documentation/Desktop provided by KDE3. AFAIR KDE3 had some similar problems with its Documentation folder in its times...

I actually meant the ls -l from the system where the charset is broken. Or is it it?
Could you also post your locale output and ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs?

Maybe the problem is related to the filesystem in use? Some well-aged filesystems (mostly FAT*) use codepages instead of Unicode. I don't see anything obviously wrong with the code itself.

I've mostly wanted to make sure, that we are talking about xdg-user-dirs, no just it's subset like Documentation/Desktop provided by KDE3. AFAIR KDE3 had some similar problems with its Documentation folder in its times...

I actually meant the ls -l from the system where the charset is broken. Or is it it?
Could you also post your locale output and ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs?

on the command line (ls -1) on the PC where it looks good

Видео
Документи
Изображения
Музика
Публични
Шаблони

and it looks good also in ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

cat ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Документи"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="/home/emanoil/Downloads"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Музика"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Изображения"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Публични"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Шаблони"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Видео"

I will post the same info from the fresh installed Notebook where the problem occurs after copying the home

Maybe the problem is related to the filesystem in use? Some well-aged filesystems (mostly FAT*) use codepages instead of Unicode. I don't see anything obviously wrong with the code itself.

No there is no FAT. I copied via SSH and via tar from the server. The filesystem is ext4. I mount on the PC va NFS.

I do not set locale, because TDE is not using the locale variables AFAIK.
I may try tar with locale set.

Is your $HOME a network drive? or local drive?

Is your $HOME a network drive? or local drive?

on the daily use PC it is network drive (but I did tar on the server, so not sure if this question is relevant)
on the newly installed notebook it is local drive. So when I copy the home I am on the local drive.

Interestingly it does not happen with the newly created user on the notebook (on the local drive)

To me it looks like double conversion in case of konqueror and ascii when the names are written as ???? from TCC

It can also be something historic as this home was created before 2006 and you remember we fixed a lot of string UTF related issues in the past, but I have no idea which files and systems are involved in this use case(s)

Ok, thanks for the feedback Emanoil. To me the only way to debug this is to proceed with progressive partial copies of things :-)