enteauth deleting the entire ~/.cache folder on linux

[gepbird]

Description

A few minutes after running enteauth, I noticed other programs misbehaving, failing to read files in ~/.cache, and I was surprised to see my cache directory being pretty much empty (~300KB) when it's usually hundreds of MB. This happened for the 3rd time.

Unfortunately I can't consistently reproduce this by opening and closing enteauth (maybe it does it only after a specific amount of time has passed?).

By peeking at the code, looks like it's deleting tempDirectory that is being set to cacheHome which resolves to $XDG_CACHE_HOME that is ~/.cache.

It should only delete enteauth's data, something like ~/.cache/enteauth.

Looks like this bug was introduced in 2e01a96 (#3334), cc @prateekmedia

Related: #2563

Version

4.1.6

What product are you using?

Ente Auth

What platform are you using?

Desktop - Linux

[prateekmedia]

Will be fixed in next release.

[stancel]

Wow, thank you for opening this issue as well as for the upcoming fix! I have been going nuts trying to track down why my ~/.cache folder contents are being periodically wiped out. It is killing the ibus socket files stored there that eventually causes the keyboard input not to work, among many other issues. I have been searching through system logs and putting scripts in place on cron jobs that backup my ~/.cache directory and then restore it has been wiped. The timestamps of this logging I put in place of this happening matches my times using and closing out enteauth. I was also able to just recreate the issue, confirming it is wiping out all contents under ~/.cache/*. Thank you for finding and diagnosing this issue and for the upcoming fix. Will check for an update now. Was on 4.1.6 when adding this comment and testing the issue.

[stancel]

Unfortunately, it looks like the fix for this issue did not make it into the 4.2.3 release that I updated to earlier today. Just had the contents of my ~/.cache/ folder wiped again when I opened EnteAuth. In case it helps anyone else, here is a script that I have come up with to periodically backup, restore the ~/.cache directory along with restarting IBus so that my keyboard does not quit working when it erases the IBus unix socket file that is for some now placed under the ~/.cache/ directory in Ubuntu 24.04. Hopefully this may help bring someone some sanity and save them some time in triaging the issue in a roundabout way until this issue can be included in an upcoming release.

I created a script called restore-cache.sh with the below contents and then put it on a cron job to run every five minutes. After several revisions, this version seems to be working well. Please feel free to use and/or modify it in any way that suits your needs.

#!/bin/bash

# Set variables
LOGFILE="$HOME/.cache_restore.log"
CACHE_DIR="$HOME/.cache"
BACKUP_DIR="$HOME/.cache_backup"
IBUS_DIR="$CACHE_DIR/ibus"
IBUS_BACKUP_DIR="$BACKUP_DIR/ibus"
IBUS_SOCKET_PATTERN="dbus-*"
EXCLUDED_PATTERN="event-sound-cache.tdb.*.x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"

# Set environment variables for cron
export DISPLAY=:0
export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/1000/bus

log() {
    echo "$(date): $1" >> "$LOGFILE"
}

log_system_state() {
    log "System state:"
    log "IBus processes:"
    ps aux | grep [i]bus >> "$LOGFILE" 2>&1
    log "IBus directory contents:"
    ls -lah "$IBUS_DIR" >> "$LOGFILE" 2>&1
    log "Backup directory contents:"
    ls -lah "$BACKUP_DIR" >> "$LOGFILE" 2>&1
    log "Cache directory contents:"
    ls -lah "$CACHE_DIR" >> "$LOGFILE" 2>&1
}

validate_cache() {
    # Check if critical IBus directory and socket file exist
    if [ -d "$IBUS_DIR" ] && [ -S "$IBUS_DIR/$(find "$IBUS_DIR" -maxdepth 1 -type s -name "$IBUS_SOCKET_PATTERN" 2>/dev/null | head -n 1)" ]; then
        return 0
    fi

    # Check if ~/.cache contains only the excluded pattern
    local non_excluded_files=$(find "$CACHE_DIR" -mindepth 1 \! -name "$EXCLUDED_PATTERN" 2>/dev/null)
    if [ -z "$non_excluded_files" ]; then
        return 1
    fi

    return 1
}

validate_backup() {
    # Check if backup contains valid IBus directory and socket file
    if [ -d "$IBUS_BACKUP_DIR" ] && [ -S "$IBUS_BACKUP_DIR/$(find "$IBUS_BACKUP_DIR" -maxdepth 1 -type s -name "$IBUS_SOCKET_PATTERN" 2>/dev/null | head -n 1)" ]; then
        return 0
    else
        return 1
    fi
}

restore_cache_from_backup() {
    log "Restoring ~/.cache from backup."
    rm -rf "$CACHE_DIR"
    cp -a "$BACKUP_DIR/." "$CACHE_DIR"
    log "Cache restoration complete."
}

backup_cache() {
    log "Synchronizing $CACHE_DIR to $BACKUP_DIR."
    rm -rf "$BACKUP_DIR"
    cp -a "$CACHE_DIR/." "$BACKUP_DIR"
    log "Backup synchronization complete."
}

setup_ibus() {
    log "Restarting IBus and ensuring proper setup."
    rm -rf "$IBUS_DIR"
    ibus restart
    sleep 15

    # Ensure the IBus directory exists after restart
    mkdir -p "$IBUS_DIR/bus"

    # Locate the socket file
    SOCKET_FILE=$(find "$IBUS_DIR" -maxdepth 1 -type s -name "$IBUS_SOCKET_PATTERN" 2>/dev/null | head -n 1)

    if [ -n "$SOCKET_FILE" ]; then
        # Remove any existing incorrect symbolic links
        find "$IBUS_DIR/bus" -type l -delete

        # Create the symbolic link to the socket file
        ln -sf "$SOCKET_FILE" "$IBUS_DIR/bus/"
        log "IBus setup restored successfully."
    else
        log "IBus socket file missing after restart. Manual intervention required."
    fi
}

# Main logic
log "Starting cache restore script."

log_system_state  # Line 93: Log the initial system state

# Validate ~/.cache
if ! validate_cache; then
    log "~/.cache is missing or invalid. Restoring from backup."
    if validate_backup; then
        restore_cache_from_backup
    else
        log "Backup is also invalid. Attempting to recreate critical directories."
        mkdir -p "$IBUS_DIR"
    fi
    setup_ibus
else
    log "~/.cache is valid."
fi

# Backup cache if valid
if validate_cache; then
    backup_cache
else
    log "Cache is invalid. Cannot update backup."
fi

log_system_state  # Line 128: Log the final system state

log "Cache restore check complete."

Hope this helps in the meantime or that the fix is included for this issue in the next release.

[gepbird]

@prateekmedia any updates on this? It's causing issues for more and more people and I'd say it's a pretty high priority issue.

For people who use nix or can compile from source, this patch could be useful as a workaround:

  ente-auth = pkgs.ente-auth.overrideAttrs (o: {
    prePatch = ''
      substituteInPlace lib/utils/directory_utils.dart \
        --replace-fail "return cacheHome" "return Directory(p.join(cacheHome.path, 'enteauthinit'));"
    '';
  });

I'll look into submitting a proper PR tomorrow if there still won't be any.