Why everything vanished from desktop in 11.10 ?

Let's focus on your documents first, assuming you are saying that they are missing.

Where did you have them? Were they in the Documents folder inside your home folder? Are you able to check for them?

If they are gone, then you should avoid turning on or using the machine (in the installed Ubuntu system) unnecessarily, and you should see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery.

If your documents are not missing or they are but you are unable to recover them with the above techniques or you have trouble performing those techniques, please reopen this question. Since it is not reasonable to do more work on the problem until this critical task has been complete, Answered is probably a reasonable status for this question, for now.

(If you have current backups of all your documents, then it will of course be easier and more reliable to simply restore them once you have repaired your Ubuntu system, so in that case, you can let us know to proceed on to working on the other aspects of the problem...though I do recommend making an *additional* copy of your backups, as it is not good to go for an extended time with only one reliably accessible copy of your important documents.)

Thank you for your answer. First an update. I earlier reinstalled some small things like "https everywhere" and then switched off the computer. Now I find that "https everywhere" etc have disappeared again. Seems like everything disappears when I switch off. The only thing left is Ubuntu 11.10. Home folder, desktop, trash and everything else is or looks empty.

Anypoint in trying datarecovery before I know the reason for this problem?

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Eliah Kagan
> Sent: 10/29/11 08:05 AM
> To: <email address hidden>
> Subject: Re: [Question #176694]: Everything  vanished in 11.10
>
> Your question #176694 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/176694
>
>  Status: Open => Answered
>
> Eliah Kagan proposed the following answer:
> Let's focus on your documents first, assuming you are saying that they
> are missing.
>
> Where did you have them? Were they in the Documents folder inside your
> home folder? Are you able to check for them?
>
> If they are gone, then you should avoid turning on or using the machine
> (in the installed Ubuntu system) unnecessarily, and you should see
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery.
>
> If your documents are not missing or they are but you are unable to
> recover them with the above techniques or you have trouble performing
> those techniques, please reopen this question. Since it is not
> reasonable to do more work on the problem until this critical task has
> been complete, Answered is probably a reasonable status for this
> question, for now.
>
> (If you have current backups of all your documents, then it will of
> course be easier and more reliable to simply restore them once you have
> repaired your Ubuntu system, so in that case, you can let us know to
> proceed on to working on the other aspects of the problem...though I do
> recommend making an *additional* copy of your backups, as it is not good
> to go for an extended time with only one reliably accessible copy of
> your important documents.)
>
> --
> If this answers your question, please go to the following page to let us
> know that it is solved:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/176694/+confirm?answer_id=0
>
> If you still need help, you can reply to this email or go to the
> following page to enter your feedback:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/176694
>
> You received this question notification because you asked the question.

Yrjo Rasanen

You said you upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10. Is it possible that since you did that, you've been booting to the Ubuntu 11.10 install CD (or DVD, or USB flash drive), and running from that? If you run from a live CD, changes you make within the live CD system go away when you reboot. (Changes you make *to* an installed system while running from the live CD will persist, but you would probably have to make a special effort for this to happen.)

Another update: I think that everything is normal now. Maybe I was
logging in as a guest. Would this explain the empty files and "naked"
11.10? Thanks and sorry for wasting your time.

On 10/29/2011 10:50 AM, Lost Bird wrote:
> Your question #176694 on foremost in Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/foremost/+question/176694
>
> Status: Answered => Open
>
> You are still having a problem:
> Thank you for your answer. First an update. I earlier reinstalled some
> small things like "https everywhere" and then switched off the computer.
> Now I find that "https everywhere" etc have disappeared again. Seems
> like everything disappears when I switch off. The only thing left is
> Ubuntu 11.10. Home folder, desktop, trash and everything else is or
> looks empty.
>
> Anypoint in trying datarecovery before I know the reason for this
> problem?
>
>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Eliah Kagan
>> Sent: 10/29/11 08:05 AM
>> To: <email address hidden>
>> Subject: Re: [Question #176694]: Everything vanished in 11.10
>>
>> Your question #176694 on Ubuntu changed:
>> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/176694
>>
>> Status: Open => Answered
>>
>> Eliah Kagan proposed the following answer:
>> Let's focus on your documents first, assuming you are saying that they
>> are missing.
>>
>> Where did you have them? Were they in the Documents folder inside your
>> home folder? Are you able to check for them?
>>
>> If they are gone, then you should avoid turning on or using the machine
>> (in the installed Ubuntu system) unnecessarily, and you should see
>> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery.
>>
>> If your documents are not missing or they are but you are unable to
>> recover them with the above techniques or you have trouble performing
>> those techniques, please reopen this question. Since it is not
>> reasonable to do more work on the problem until this critical task has
>> been complete, Answered is probably a reasonable status for this
>> question, for now.
>>
>> (If you have current backups of all your documents, then it will of
>> course be easier and more reliable to simply restore them once you have
>> repaired your Ubuntu system, so in that case, you can let us know to
>> proceed on to working on the other aspects of the problem...though I do
>> recommend making an *additional* copy of your backups, as it is not good
>> to go for an extended time with only one reliably accessible copy of
>> your important documents.)
>>
>> --
>> If this answers your question, please go to the following page to let us
>> know that it is solved:
>> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/176694/+confirm?answer_id=0
>>
>> If you still need help, you can reply to this email or go to the
>> following page to enter your feedback:
>> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/176694
>>
>> You received this question notification because you asked the question.
>
> Yrjo Rasanen
>

Yes, that would explain it.

When you are logged in as the guest account, you are not shown the files belonging to your personal user account, because you are not using that account. Furthermore, the guest account's "personal" files are created when you log in as Guest and destroyed automatically. They are usually destroyed on reboot.

You can check and see if there are folders in /tmp that start with guest-, which might contain the files you created while logged in to previous guest sessions. There probably will not be any, but it is worth checking. If there are none, then you can attempt to recover lost files created as Guest by using https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery. If you have lost important work, then you should use the live CD to check for the presence of guest- folders inside /tmp, since just booting into your system again will increase the likelihood of them being deleted and the likelihood of the data being destroyed if they have been deleted. Please note that this is the /tmp folder on your installed system, not the /tmp folder on the live CD system, so you'll have to mount the root filesystem of the installed system somewhere in the live CD system (for example, if the installed system as /dev/sda1 as its root partition, then you could do "sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt" and then you'd access the installed system's /tmp folder as /mnt/tmp).