Re: Solved: Re: What is creating directories under my home directory?

[songbird <songbird@anthive.com>]

Curt Howland wrote:
>
> On Saturday 27 September 2025, Curt Howland was heard to say:
>> My main system doesn't have this problem, I have no idea what I did
>> right with that one.
>
> Found it.
>
> If the entry is commented out in ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs it gets 
> recreated automagically.
>
> #XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
>
> becomes 
>
> XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
>
> However, if the entry in ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs is like this:
>
> XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
> XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/"

  i last edited this file back in 2018 and have forgotten about
it but it works fine for MATE.


> the directories are not created, since ~/ already exists.
>
> On prior machines I had been copying the .config directory in its 
> entirety, something I did not want to do again because cruft builds 
> up.
>
> Many thanks, Mr. Heller, hopefully this will help some folks who find 
> themselves having to create empty files to stop the directories being 
> created.
>
> Curt-


  songbird