cannot open my video's or music

hi hope someone can help me, my daughter has a aspire one with linux on and everything under Connect,work and fun works but when i click under File only My Files work but has "My Disk:///" on the top line but nothing comes up when i click on either my docs or video's nothing works hope someone can help.

thanks in advance

 

Can you see the list of folder shortcuts on the left hand side of the file manager window which comes up when you click 'My Files'?

If you can, are there sections there called 'Documents' and 'Videos'? (if they are missing, then the file manager has nowhere to go when you click on 'My Videos' or 'My Documents', so we'll need to deal with that).

If there isn't a list there, does one appear if you press CTRL-B?

 

hi daldred sorry for the delay the only thing that comes up on the left hand side is "My Disk" nothing underneath it and nothing appears when i press CTRL B

 

Hmm, that's a bit odd.

Let's get down to it, then; terminal time! Press alt-F2, type 'terminal' in the box and click run - this gets you a Linux terminal. Now enter these commands in the terminal and then copy and paste back what happens:

Code:

pwd
ls -la

pwd (Present Working Directory) tells me what directory the One is regarding as your home directory; ls -la (LiSt long format, all files) will tell me what's in there. If the directories we're expecting are found there but not in the File Manager, then that leads us down one path to a solution; if not it's a different path!

 

when i enter pwd i get "/mnt/home
when i enter ls -la i get
drwxrwxrwx 2 user user 4096 2009-04-07 06:22.
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 4096 2008-05-22 04:14 ..

does any of that mean anything to you as it means nothing to me

 

OK, that's telling you that:
- you're in the directory called /mnt/home
- there are subdirectories of this called root and user
- what the permissions on those folders are

When I do the same thing, I am immediately in the directory /home/user, though, and that's what I'd expect (as you should always be put into your (i.e. user's) home directory when a terminal starts.

With the terminal again, type these instructions:

Code:

pwd
cd user
ls -la

Leave the terminal running at this point, you're going to use it further down.

That's the same as last time, but this time you are changing directory to 'user', which is where you should be in the first place. I've repeated the 'pwd' at the start to make sure that you do go to the same place this time, and that it wasn't a quirk of some sort.

With luck you should now see a list of the directories you're expecting (Music, Videos etc); if that's the case then all (heh!) we have to do is work out why it's not automatically getting you to your home directory properly.

To see if it's one of the basic settings, enter this command:

Code:

grep ^user /etc/passwd

This will show the line of the "passwords" file which starts with the word 'user' - so the one relating to the 'user' account on the One. Immediately after the word 'user' on the line which comes up, there is a series of letters and numbers starting with $ and ending // - paste the line back in here, but delete the section of the line between the $ and the //. (It's very unlikely that anyone could misuse that information but it is related to your password, so not the sort of thing you should put on a public forum).

 

hi david thanks again for helping

right i have tried the first thing you said but it comes up
bash: cd: user: No such file or directory

then i tried the password one and it came up tre following but did not have the // in it so i have taken out some numbers

user:$1$Dtn$zmHIxsurG2QbzLaaLUDXy.:500:500::/home/user:/bin/bash

hope this helps

 

Hmm. If there is no such directory as /home/user, then somehow you've deleted your home directory and all its contents. That should be quite hard - but not impossible - to do: in the graphical file manager you'd have had to ignore two warnings. In the terminal it's easier, but it seems unlikely that you've done that.

Let's make sure of this: again in the terminal do this:

Code:

cd /
pwd
cd home
pwd
cd user
pwd

If the directory is gone, then the results will be like this (except that yours probably has 'localhost' instead of 'one'):

Code:

[user@localhost ~]$ cd /
[user@one /]$ pwd
/
[user@localhost /]$ cd home
[user@localhost home]$ pwd
/home
[user@localhost home]$ cd user
bash: cd: user: No such file or directory
[user@localhost home]$ pwd
/home
[user@localhost home]$ 

Is that what you get? (What I've done is go back to the root directory - '/' - and then get to the home directory from there rather than assuming anything).

 

hi david this this is what i get

[user@localhost home]$ cd /
[user@localhost /]$ pwd
/
[user@localhost /]$ cd home
[user@localhost home]$ pwd
/home
[user@localhost home]$ cd user
[user@localhost ~]$ pwd
/home/user
[user@localhost ~]$

 

any more help will be appreciated

thanks

 

OK, now you do appear to have a home directory. Do that again, but this time after the last step type 'ls' and hit enter; again paste the results here.

 

hi sorry its been a bit of time had a few problems done what you said and got this

[user@localhost home]$ cd /
[user@localhost /]$ pwd
/
[user@localhost /]$ cd home
[user@localhost home]$ pwd
/home
[user@localhost home]$ cd user
[user@localhost ~]$ pwd
/home/user
[user@localhost ~]$ ls
Desktop libfreebl3.so libnssckbi.so libsmime3.so Music
Documents libnspr4.so libplc4.so libsoftokn3.so Pictures
Downloads libnss3.so libplds4.so libssl3.so Videos
[user@localhost ~]$

 

OK, so that means you do have the relevant folders. (Music, Pictures, Documents and Videos are all listed).

Let's see what's in Videos: starting from where you got to last time

Code:

cd Videos
ls -l

Note that the capital 'V' is important: small-v 'videos' would be a different folder, and doesn't exist!

 

[user@localhost home]$ cd /
[user@localhost /]$ pwd
/
[user@localhost /]$ cd home
[user@localhost home]$ pwd
/home
[user@localhost home]$ cd user
[user@localhost ~]$ pwd
/home/user
[user@localhost ~]$ ls
DataCardGKU Downloads libnss3.so libplds4.so libssl3.so Videos
Desktop libfreebl3.so libnssckbi.so libsmime3.so Music
Documents libnspr4.so libplc4.so libsoftokn3.so Pictures
[user@localhost ~]$ cd Videos
[user@localhost Videos]$ ls -1
doctor.who.christmas.special.2008.the.next.doctor.avi
doctor who series 30
hotel for dogs.avi
Kung.Fu.Panda.[2008]Dvdrip-jocky.avi
Little.Britain.USA.S01E01.HDTV.XviD-NoTV.avi
Mamma Mia![2008]DvDrip[Eng]-FXG.avi
Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)-jigaxx.avi
New Folder
Wallace.And.Gromit.A.Matter.Of.Loaf.And.Death.HDTV.XviD-BiA.avi
[user@localhost Videos]$

 

Here's something you could try:

Start the terminal, as you did before then go to /home/user

$ cd /home/user

Now make a directory called Documents

$ mkdir Documents

Now try clicking on the 'My Documents' icon in the files section of the Aspire One desktop

I'm guessing that for some reason everything in the user directory was deleted for some reason.

 

tried what you said lisheen and got this

[user@localhost home]$ cd /home/user
[user@localhost ~]$ mkdir Documents
mkdir: cannot create directory `Documents': File exists
[user@localhost ~]$

 

OK, so we know that the directory exists and has stuff in it, Now the question is why it doesn't show up in the file manager.

Open the File Manager (click on 'My Files'), and check this:

1. The address bar at the top should show "My Disk:///"
2. The top thing in the left-hand bar should be "My Disk", with a guage showing the size of the disk and a little spanner icon next to it.
3. On the right hand side, you should see your folders, including Documents
4. On the left hand side, you should also see a link to Documents, among others.

Can you check this and say how much of this is correct? If it's all but the last thing, then right-click on the Documents folder in the right hand pane, and select Send To -> Side Pane; does it now appear on the left hand side, and does clicking My Documents from the basic desktop work?

 

hi david
nearly fixed it when i did what you said nothing was on the left hand side or right hand sideapart from "my disk" but i somehow found them and draged them to the my disk part and its working fine now from the file buttons only problem is now when my daughter writes a doc on openoffice and goes to save it it wants to save it under "user" but my doc file's are not in trere any more because i have moved them.

is there any way to save the correct location on open office for saving doc's as its a long way for my daughter to go to get to the correct place and i am afraid she might delete something again :shock:

 

Hi!

I'm not in front of my AAO at the moment, but on my present machine I also have OpenOffice, and I believe the process is the same.

In OpenOffice, go to Tools->Options; then in the tree on the left hand side click on OpenOffice.org and then Paths. In the right hand side of the dialog one of the entries is something like 'My Documents'; select it and click 'edit', then choose the right location from the dialog which appears. Hit 'Select', OK the Options dialog, and you should be sorted out.