Directories suddenly turned into broken links

**accessd** · 1 Week Ago

A number of directories in my home directory — including Downloads, Desktop, Videos, Templates and Public — suddenly started showing up as broken links. Everything was working fine when I started my work day, but I soon started noticing that I couldn't access my Downloads folder. I didn't make any changes to the system in that time, but the package manager did perform an upgrade.

Double-clicking on any of the directories in Nautilus gives the following error: "The link 'Videos' is broken. Move it to Trash? This link cannot be used because its target '/home/jesse/Videos' doesn't exist." ls -al displays them as follows:

Code:

lrwxrwxrwx   1 jesse            jesse               18 Apr 16 15:53  Videos -> /home/jesse/Videos

I tried removing the broken link to the Downloads directory and recreating it. I was able to download an image from Firefox and edit it in GIMP, however, when saving it, I was told that its metadata could not be saved. I'm running Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS, using a solid-state drive. None of the directories in question were symlinks. Does anyone have any idea what might be going on? Is this a sign of more issues to come?

TIA

**ajgreeny** · 1 Week Ago

Very strange!
What hardware are you using?
Please run command inxi -Fzx as a start, and post the output using code tags which may give us some clues about where to begin looking for answers.

**accessd** · 1 Week Ago

Thanks for your help. The output is as follows:

Code:

System:
  Kernel: 5.15.0-102-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.4.0
    Desktop: GNOME 42.9 Distro: Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: ASUS product: All Series v: N/A
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: ASUSTeK model: H97I-PLUS v: Rev X.0x serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI: American Megatrends v: 3602 date: 04/08/2018
Battery:
  Device-1: apple_mfi_fastcharge model: N/A charge: N/A status: N/A
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: Intel Core i7-4790K bits: 64 type: MT MCP
    arch: Haswell rev: 3 cache: L1: 256 KiB L2: 1024 KiB L3: 8 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 3293 high: 4058 min/max: 800/4400 cores: 1: 2295
    2: 2295 3: 2296 4: 3422 5: 3995 6: 3993 7: 3993 8: 4058 bogomips: 63854
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Baffin [Radeon RX 550 640SP / 560/560X]
    vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: amdgpu v: kernel bus-ID: 01:00.0
  Device-2: Logitech HD Webcam C525 type: USB
    driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo bus-ID: 3-13:3
  Display: wayland server: X.Org v: 1.22.1.1 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.1
    compositor: gnome-shell driver: X: loaded: amdgpu,ati
    unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,radeon,vesa gpu: amdgpu
    resolution: 2560x1440~144Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: AMD Radeon RX 560 Series (polaris11 LLVM 15.0.7 DRM
    3.42 5.15.0-102-generic)
    v: 4.6 Mesa 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.2 direct render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 9 Series Family HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
  Device-2: AMD Baffin HDMI/DP Audio [Radeon RX 550 640SP / 560/560X]
    vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 01:00.1
  Device-3: Logitech HD Webcam C525 type: USB
    driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo bus-ID: 3-13:3
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.15.0-102-generic running: yes
  Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.99.1 running: yes
  Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.48 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Ethernet I218-V vendor: ASUSTeK driver: e1000e v: kernel
    port: f040 bus-ID: 00:19.0
  IF: eno1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-1: enxb235b5ecf1ab state: up speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: <filter>
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 1.36 TiB used: 253.97 GiB (18.2%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Crucial model: CT500BX100SSD1 size: 465.76 GiB
  ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Crucial model: CT1000MX500SSD1 size: 931.51 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 457.28 GiB used: 41.95 GiB (9.2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 96.5 MiB used: 6 MiB (6.3%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1
  ID-3: /home size: 915.82 GiB used: 212.02 GiB (23.2%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/sdb
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) file: /swapfile
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 29.8 C mobo: 27.8 C gpu: amdgpu temp: 36.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: amdgpu fan: 1277
Info:
  Processes: 309 Uptime: 17h 3m Memory: 15.56 GiB used: 2.55 GiB (16.4%)
  Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 11.4.0 Packages: 3424 Shell: Bash
  v: 5.1.16 inxi: 3.3.13

**ajgreeny** · 1 Week Ago

Hmm?

That didn't help much so let's try something else.

We need to know where those folders are as they would not seem to be where they should be in home/jesse/Videos etc, etc.
Let's start with commands locate Videos which will probably show a huge list and find -iname Vidoes which might be more useful.

**accessd** · 1 Week Ago

locate Videos found /home/jesse/Videos. find -iname Videos also found ./Videos. However, when I try to cd into the directory, I get the following error:

Code:

bash: cd: /home/jesse/Videos: Too many levels of symbolic links

**dragonfly41** · 1 Week Ago

That gives a clue ...

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquesti...s_of_symbolic/

"Unless you've done something stupid with symbolic links, this is probably a sign of hard drive failure."