GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 147353
nautilus should dereference symlinks and open target folders
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
When opening a folder via a symlink nautilus treats that folder as it it were an entirely distinct folder from the destination folder, even though the contents of the two are exactly the same. In my opinion this violates the spacial model, which is not bad per se, but this just feels like the wrong behavior to me. Suggested behavior: When opening a symlink nautilus should dereference the symlink, then open the destination folder.
I have just confirmed this bug using nautilus 2.7.2 I created a symlinnk to a folder, and opened it in nautlius. Then I naviaged to the same folder not using the symlink, and both opened in seperate windows. I then wondered what would happen if I dragged a file from one folder to the other . I moved the file from the symlink to the real version, and the file disappread in the real version (the destination of the drag). A dialog box popped up telling me that a file with that name already exists, asking if I want to overwrite it. I was given 3 options (skip, overwrite, cancel if I rememver correctly). Before I got to click any of them nautilus crashed. After the crash the file had disappreared (DATA LOSS!). I am going to try and reproduce the crash now to get a stack trace.
It was crashing everytime, when dragging a file from the symlink to the actual folder, and from the actual folder to the symlink version. I was able to get a backtrace, but without any debugging symbols. I then installed the nautilus-debuginfo RPM, and now it does not crash (!). The file still gets deleted if you pick 'skip' when asked what action to take.
Nautilus 2.7.2, I can't get a crash out of it. If I choose Replace, the file disappears every time, no matter which direction. Severity should be bumped to critical, imo, because of the data loss.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 114074 ***