why does /home/.Trash-0 contain duplicates of all of the user's files?
 

i've been trying to get rid of unnecessary files on my kids' computer and just noticed that /home/.Trash-0 contains a duplicate of the file tree of the /home directory, including all of the current users' files and subdirectories. is this something i should leave alone? the machine is running slack 13.0 with KDE, and this is something i never noticed before.

I deleted it and have not noticed any adverse side effects. It was owned by root, I wonder if it is created when you delete something when using su?

No, that doesn't seem to be it, just tried deleting as root and no new folder created.

samac

but it doesn't contain anything that has been deleted, only stuff that is currently there????? wierd...

These .Trash-0 directories appear when root deletes non-root user files from a file manager. The 0 is the system $UID, which is zero for root. The directories are created any time a user deletes files belonging to another user account.

As fas I know, the .Trash-XX directories do not appear when deleting files from the command line, only from a file manager. I only use KDE therefore I can't say whether this is a KDE behavior or all compliant file managers. I'll take a wild guess that any file manager compliant with using the Trash can for storing deleted files will create these directories.

Thanks Woodsman. I deleted from the command line during my test, but I didn't consider the difference that using a file manager would make.

samac