Recycle Bin on Linux

Set up a Recycle Bin or Trash for PCQLinux 8.0 which works both in the console as well as in the X Window

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

On MS (Microsoft) Windows, you breathe a sigh of relief when you find your accidentally deleted files in the recycle bin. This article is an attempt to bring in the same relief on Linux. On Linux command line or console, usually the rm command is used to delete files and directories. The rm command deletes the files permanently, to the extent that they cannot be recovered by conventional ways. To circumvent this and other issues (discussed below), we setup a robust “recycle bin” or “trash can” on PCQLinux 8.0 (given out with PCQuest March 2003).

Trash in KDE and Gnome
Fortunately those who are not into command line way of working, both KDE and Gnome have a recycle bin called Trash—on the desktop. In KDE, if you press the Del key against a file or directory, it goes into the Trash, while a Shift+Del deletes it permanently. This behavior is same as in MS Windows. Gnome goes to the extent of not providing a Shift+Del option by default. So everything you delete goes into Gnome’s trash.

To enable Shift+Del in Gnome, launch the Nautilus file manager by clicking on “Start Menu>Home Folder”. Click on Edit>Preferences>Desktop & Trash. Check the option labeled “Include a Delete command that bypasses trash”.

Instead of keys, those who use right click menu to delete files, may get confused.

Both in KDE and Gnome (with Shift+Del enabled as per the above tip), right clicking gives you two options for deletion - “Delete” and “Move to Trash”. A first time user – especially those accustomed to MS Windows may overlook the latter option and select Delete, which will permanently delete the files.

Another problem is for those who use a Terminal window (start menu>System Tools>Terminal ) to access the command line.

Files deleted in the terminal window - using the rm command – don’t go into the Trash.

System-wide Trash Can
On this month’s PCQuest CD we have given out a package called libtrash which when installed sets up a Trash for Linux console as well as X Window. This means whether you delete a file when in pure Linux command line, when in KDE/Gnome or when in a terminal window within KDE/Gnome, the file will go into the Trash. What’s more, with libtrash you have two trash cans when in KDE/Gnome (refer to the box “libtrash fix for Gnome”). If you Shift+DelETE a file, it will go into the libtrash’s trash can. When you delete a file it will go into the KDE/Gnome’s trash can and when you empty the can, it will go into the libtrash’s can. It is up to you to decide whether this is double protection to your files or a nuisance (refer to the box “I don’t want two bins”).

Set up libtrash
Mount this month’s PCQuest CD and change to the directory cdrom/system/linux on the CD. Copy the file named libtrash-latest.tgz to /opt (say) directory. Extract the archive as:

tar -zxvf libtrash-latest.tgz
This will create a directory named libtrash-2.0 under /opt. Change to this directory and issue the following commands to install the package.

make make install

Enable Trash Can
If you want to enable the libtrash for all the users (who have account on the Linux machine) then append the following line to the file named profile found under the /etc directory

export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/local/lib/libtrash.so

In case you want to enable the Trash only for a particular user, then append the above line to the file named .bash_profile in the user’s home directory (/root for the root user and /home/ for other users). Logout and re-login or restart the system if you have setup the trash for all the users.

Henceforth whenever you delete a file residing in your home directory, you will find it in a directory named Trash under your home directory. If you delete a file residing in any other directory - /, /usr, /bin, /opt, /var etc. - then you will find it under the subdirectory SYSTEM_ROOT of the Trash directory. Note that the path of the deleted files is mainlined under the Trash or the SYSTEM_ROOT directory. That is, you delete a file named myscript.sh residing in the directory /opt/scripts, then you will find the file under Trash/SYSTEM_ ROOT/opt/scripts.

Restore Deleted Files
Suppose you have deleted a file or directory named xyz from your home directory. As said above, the file gets moved in the Trash directory. To restore the file, change to the Trash directory (found in your home directory) as:

cd $HOME/Trash and issue the following command:

cp -r xyz $HOME

Crash Proof Crash Proof works well on all Windows platforms including the NTFS file system. A “server” version is also there that has options to recover data from volumes. You need to follow some rules after the failure occurs, essentially not doing anything that would further place or remove data on the hard disk. Crash Proof comes on a copy-protected floppy disk and can be installed on a fixed number of systems, tracked by a counter on the floppy. Its manual is quite detailed even providing some scenarios of restores the user could attempt. A snapshot of important areas of your hard disk is taken and stored in a folder named “Unistal”. We tested the “workstation” version of the software with a 15 GB hard disk (3 partitions), one NTFS partition containing Windows 2000 Advanced server, and the other two, ordinary data. Recovery was possible even after we deleted and formatted these partitions. One unhandled problem though is that when another hard disk containing non-Windows operating systems (like Linux) is attached, images are not taken. To recover, simply boot from a standard Windows 98 startup disk and run the ‘Revive’ program from the floppy disk provided. Data is restored to another FAT partition and takes some time depending on the size of your hard disk, giving the fastest results if the OS is installed in “C” drive. Shruti Pareek

In case, xyz was within a subdirectory abc (say) of your home directory, you will find the file xyz in the directory Trash/abc. In this case, in the above command, substitute the file name with the directory name as:

cp -r abc $HOME

xyz will get restored in the subdirectory abc in your home directory.

Suppose you have deleted a file or directory named xyz in the directory /usr/bin. In this case, the file gets moved under Trash/SYSTEM_ROOT/usr/bin. To restore it, change to the directory Trash/SYSTEM_ROOT and issue the following command:

cp -r bin /

Note that unlike with MS Windows, the restored files are not deleted from the Trash.

Empty Trash Can
You cannot simply delete the files in the Trash directory. The Trash can is protected against deletion for a reason (refer to comments in the file /etc/libtrash.conf). To empty the trash, first issue the following command to remove the protection:

export UNCOVER_DIRS=$HOME/Trash

Then change to the Trash subdirectory in your home directory and issue the following command to empty the Trash

rm -r * —force

When done, issue the following command to set the protection again:

unset UNCOVER_DIRS

Using libtrash you can even write-protect specific directories. You can setup libtrash to ignore files based on their extensions or regular expressions matching their name. Refer to the README file found in the libtrash archive and the well-documented libtrash.conf file (found in /etc directory) for details on configuration.

Shekhar Govindarajan

• Safeguard your Data

Page(s)   1  2  3