Strange permissions and/or links to default directories in home folder (Music, Pictures, Public, Templates and Videos))

User-dirs-dirs looked strange:

martin@ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3:~$ cat .config/user-dirs.dirs
# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run.
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/"

Changing it to:
martin@ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3:~$ cat .config/user-dirs.dirs
# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run.
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Public"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"

and running sudo xdg-user-dirs-update restored the folders with the correct icons. No idea what caused this in the first place.

Thank you for your bug report. How did you install the system and using what locale? Do you have any specific userdir configuration (nfs, ad auth, ...)?

I installed it with default settings and locale but I just remembered that after install I changed the locale to the English_Danish version. Since the folders are restored now I won't try to replicate the error, but it seems something went wrong when installing a new locale.
BW
Martin

alright, let's see if testing would show other issues, those packages didn't change in an decade though so it's a bit surprising

It happened again:

martin@ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3:~$ ls -l
total 2992
drwxrwxr-x 3 martin martin 4096 Sep 18 12:44 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 martin martin 4096 Sep 19 13:48 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x 19 martin martin 4096 Sep 18 12:42 Documents
drwxr-xr-x 4 martin martin 4096 Sep 20 11:31 Downloads
drwx------ 5 martin martin 4096 Sep 19 14:56 Dropbox
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 18 Sep 20 11:32 Music -> /home/martin/Music
drwxrwxr-x 3 martin martin 4096 Sep 19 15:10 Pictures
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 19 Sep 20 11:32 Public -> /home/martin/Public
drwxrwxr-x 3 martin martin 4096 Sep 18 16:25 R
-rw------- 1 martin martin 3027062 Sep 19 14:37 references.bib
drwx------ 13 martin martin 4096 Sep 19 13:56 snap
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 22 Sep 20 11:32 Templates -> /home/martin/Templates
lrwxrwxrwx 1 martin martin 19 Sep 20 11:32 Videos -> /home/martin/Videos

but this time, .config/user-dirs.dirs is not changed, or the changes to correct I made before are still there, e.g., XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos".

In fact, even though I changed the locale to en_DK, Settings still show the default en_US and locale seems to be a mix?

martin@ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3:~$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_NAME=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

The timestamp indicates those were created at 11:32, do you know what you did on the system around that time? is that when you turned the computer on/started the session?

No, the laptop had been up and running for some time there. Here's journalctl from 11:32:

Sep 20 11:31:49 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:31:49 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 kernel: audit: type=1400 audit(1695202311.035:244): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" class="file" profile="snap.firefox.firefox" name="/etc/fstab" pid=6542 comm="firefox" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1000 ouid=0
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 dbus-daemon[1487]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.hostname1' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.hostname1.service' requested by ':1.172' (uid=1000 pid=6542 comm="/snap/firefox/3145/usr/lib/firefox/firefox" label="snap.firefox.firefox (enforce)")
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 systemd[1]: Starting systemd-hostnamed.service - Hostname Service...
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 dbus-daemon[1487]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.hostname1'
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 systemd[1]: Started systemd-hostnamed.service - Hostname Service.
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 kernel: audit: type=1107 audit(1695202311.383:245): pid=1487 uid=101 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj=unconfined msg='apparmor="DENIED" operation="dbus_method_call" bus="system" path="/org/freedesktop/hostname1" interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" member="GetAll" mask="send" name=":1.173" pid=6542 label="snap.firefox.firefox" peer_pid=7747 peer_label="unconfined"
                                             exe="/usr/bin/dbus-daemon" sauid=101 hostname=? addr=? terminal=?'
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 kernel: audit: type=1107 audit(1695202311.383:246): pid=1487 uid=101 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj=unconfined msg='apparmor="DENIED" operation="dbus_method_call" bus="system" path="/org/freedesktop/hostname1" interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" member="GetAll" mask="send" name=":1.173" pid=6542 label="snap.firefox.firefox" peer_pid=7747 peer_label="unconfined"
                                             exe="/usr/bin/dbus-daemon" sauid=101 hostname=? addr=? terminal=?'
Sep 20 11:31:51 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:31:58 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:31:58 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:32:07 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:32:07 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:32:07 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:32:07 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: meta_window_set_stack_position_no_sync: assertion 'window->stack_position >= 0' failed
Sep 20 11:32:08 ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3 gnome-shell[3636]: Meta.Rectangle is deprecated, use Mtk.Rectangle instead
Sep 20 11:32:08 Th...

.config/user-dirs.dirs is rewritten at boot and logout/login and xdg-user-dirs-update after correcting the file and logout/login does not re-create the folders. It's not nautilus-dropbox since removing it does not stop the error from occurring. Attaching a log from a boot where before rebooting I had corrected user-dirs.dirs. When I logged in, my changes were gone and the folders were again links to themselves. Note that Pictures and Documents were not changed to links, probably because these were non-empty.

it's weird but hard to tell what is rewritting the configuration. Do you have any non standard software you installed?

No, this is a fresh Mantic minimal install from 18/9 with all software installed as snaps, except from MATLAB (propriety), RStudio (deb), thinlinc (deb) and nautilus-dropbox (deb).

As I wrote above, I noticed that locale seems to be a mix of en_US and en_DK and that even though I set it to en_DK in Settings, it reverts to en_US.

martin@ThinkPad-P14s-Gen-3:~$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_NAME=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

Seems like others recently have had the same issue on 22.04: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1483018/home-user-desktop-and-public-folders-show-as-type-link-broken-inode-symlink

Also on 20.04: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1482903/home-directories-turned-into-symbolic-links-without-telling-me-the-reason

These posts are recent ~1 month. Temporary fix is to have at least one file in the folders so as to avoid them being deleted.