The culprit is MAME (mame_0.206+dfsg.1-1 in my buster machine). I deleted the directory, ran MAME thru the menu and voila, it showed up again.
changing
.mame/io.ini so that the key
historypath starts with
.mame/ is enough to make the problem disappear for me.
HTH,
--
[]s; Massa⠠⠵
via GMail Inbox