Disable writing to $HOME/.local/Trash/ directory

[Chris Jones]

I just noticed that my $HOME directory (debian/linux) had grown to a whopping 16G in size... a tenfold increase since the last monthly full backup of this machine.

I had been working on a rather large epub (c. 30M) over the last month or so and I found hundreds of copies of the epub in the ./Trash/files directory.

A quick test indicates that a new copy is added each time I delete a book from the Calibre directory.

How can I disable this feature in Calibre and make sure nothing ever gets written to this directory?

[theducks]

Side questions:
Why is TRASH not being emptied?

Trash is used to give you a (slight) chance of recovering from an oops , not for other (long term) purposes

[eschwartz]

I kind of like the idea of using Trash for its intended purpose.

I think the real problem is you are blindly backing up your entire $HOME
Add the Trash folder to your exclusion list. Better yet, add ~/.local to the exclusion list, since I can't really think of a lot of things you'd want to back up from in there!


I really do dearly hope you aren't backing up ~/.cache too because that would be terribly foolish...

...

If you are deleting many books at once, calibre warns you that they will be permanently deleted (it's faster than moving to Trash).
IIRC there is an option in the delete confirmation dialog to skip the Trash.

[Chris Jones]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I kind of like the idea of using Trash for its intended purpose.

I think the real problem is you are blindly backing up your entire $HOME
Add the Trash folder to your exclusion list. Better yet, add ~/.local to the exclusion list, since I can't really think of a lot of things you'd want to back up from in there!


I really do dearly hope you aren't backing up ~/.cache too because that would be terribly foolish...

...

If you are deleting many books at once, calibre warns you that they will be permanently deleted (it's faster than moving to Trash).
IIRC there is an option in the delete confirmation dialog to skip the Trash.

Aaaah thanks...!

I'd already excluded ~/.local just in case but I had missed ~/.cache (~800M+)...! That's roughly half of the size of my lean & mean $HOME directory...!

In any case... since I have no clue what purpose this hidden "Trash" directory might serve ... I just made sure Calibre will not be able to write to it:

$ chmod ugoa-w ~/.local/share/Trash

So far... so good...

CJ

[kovidgoyal]

~/.local/Trash is where the Recycle bin for your desktop environment resides. If your desktop environment has no recycle bin then I suggest you setup a script to auto-clean it periodically. That's what I do on my qtile based desktop -- recycled files older than seven days are deleted automatically. Look for the autotrash script, you should find it floating around somewhere on the net.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Chris Jones

Aaaah thanks...!

I'd already excluded ~/.local just in case but I had missed ~/.cache (~800M+)...! That's roughly half of the size of my lean & mean $HOME directory...!

In any case... since I have no clue what purpose this hidden "Trash" directory might serve ... I just made sure Calibre will not be able to write to it:

$ chmod ugoa-w ~/.local/share/Trash

So far... so good...

CJ

As Kovid said, the Trash directory is equivalent to Windows' Recycle Bin.
Most file browsers (among others) delete files to the Trash as a precaution against accidentally deleting things, there is also a python program called trash-cli that lets you trash and untrash things from the command-line.
It is easy to view the Trash from said file browsers, and empty it or permanently delete specific items.

There's all sorts of interesting types of dotfiles in the average home folder, you should definitely take a look at what you need and don't need to back up.

Happy to help, especially the reminder to exclude ~/.cache