Hi,

I thank the last two posters for their comments.

First, I copied the files from the iTunes\media\music directory into the shared directory, which was D:\meMusic on the Win 7 VM. I closed VM down. The next day, when I fired up my machine again. (I try to remember to shut it down every night), I moved the files from meMusic which was /home/me/meMusic to /home/me/Music. I did not have VM open.

Now, although my sysadmin brother is far away, I live in an apartment complex 80% full of RPI (Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute) students. In my building, every student but my daughter (who just graduated with her BS in Civil Engineering specializing in Geotechnical. Not that I'm proud of her or anything...) is a graduate student and you'll never guess what every one of them is majoring in. Computer Science! So, with 2-3 grad students per apartment , I was able to have other, more qualified people look at it before I gave up and reloaded Ubuntu from scratch. Nobody could find the lost files. And reboot didn't fix the problem either. Nobody ever said anything about having to have the VM running. And I had followed the EXACT same process several times before - always with the VM closed and never had a problem. So, I still believe -- and a couple of other people who looked at it agreed that it was probably something wonky in the GUI Double Pane File Manager (which was not just Nemo in dual pane mode).

I hope I addressed the questions/comments of the last two posters. If there is a reason why I should have VM running, I don't get it. I can access the file no problem with VM closed. Yes, when I start VM up again, the file is empty, but since the shared file is only to copy my music from iTunes into and I never copy anything the other way (from Linux to the VM Win7). All I want is MY music in a nice place with all of the rest of my ripped music so I can play them all in Linux.

Okay, did you ever run "find" or "locate" all over your machine (i.e. starting from "/") to verify that your music is gone?

If it should happen again
A good command to try is simply This shows the size (and percentage usage) of all your mounted file systems.
Run this occasionally to check that your disk usage is "reasonable".

Please keep posts in this thread on topic, any troubleshooting should be done in a dedicated thread. I've selected one post from this thread for the column so far; stay tuned. Thanks for the suggestions and keep them coming.

--jeremy

jeremy,

As you see from the responses here, "Anything opensource and Linux related is fair game," is going to get a lot of varied responses (and lack of focus apparently ). May I suggest that you have a weekly (or some other periodic) focus, where for that period you only answer questions of a specific type. Maybe keep the "anything open source or linux related" query out there, but in the column itself focus on several related questions, and keep the others available for a future theme.

Not that I'm unfamiliar with open source, but maybe for those new, a good question to answer would be: What is Open Source software, and why should (not does) it matter to {myself, my community, my business}? Trying to be as objective as possible, avoiding injecting an opinion as many other sites do.

As much as I will likely get flamed, avoid the Windows comparisons when answering questions when it's not absolutely necessary. Obviously by this I mean the references should be present when warranted and absent when not so. Plenty of that abound on the 'Net and accompanying flame wars. Any focus should be on the merits of Linux and F/OSS as it stands alone, and not having to use some other OS to show it's strengths.

[QUOTE=goumba; Wyrd bið ful aræd
Gyf þū well sprece, wyrc æfter swā.[/QUOTE]

Goumba! What's this?! An bhfuil Gaeilge agat ???

( A very good suggestion, btw; lack of on-topic focus and senile drift runs rampant on LQ.... but I attribute most of it to the elevated IQ on LQ, mais oui? )

Close my friend, geographically at least: they are not Irish but Saxon. The first, roughly, "Fate is unchangeable". The second, "If you speak well, do so afterward."

And that was certainly a polite way of putting the off topic drifts.

It seems to me, if I remember correctly, that Linux started out as a kinda 'do it yourself' project. The main draw then was how you could make your OS the way you wanted it to be, not the way M$ wanted it to be.
Now a days, people don't wanna mess around with a million configurations. They want a reliable, stable OS that is easy to maintain. This is directly because M$ is so widely distributed and most people have been exposed to it. AND they like that! I expect that today anyone coming from M$ will either say "%%^&**&%#" it and go back to M$ just for these reasons. Some of us will stick with it just because we're stubborn. Personally, I don't find it all the difficult. I know where to go for help. all I have to do is be patient and an answer will come along.

The main point this noob is trying to make is that Linux will fail in the user department if it does not get easier to setup and maintain! I like to lurk at #LinuxMint-help and the two things I see most are nvidia card and wifi setup problems.

I find Windows too difficult for me - but Linux is very straight-forward to set up.

Saxon. What are the odds? Well, I suppose it's auld Angle, sha? Pity no one speaks it any more, I like where it went eventually... and William S. turned it into an art form, no?
The manner I employed to address the off-topic drifters was from the heart, actually; whilst some of the "drifters" here may just need meds, I have found a significant percentage of LQ'ers to be astonishingly intelligent, possessed of stellar communications skills, and actually able to focus on the question-at-hand, at least most of the time. Bemusing, the difference between one who presents their stance with the self-confidence imbued by proficiency and experience and... the others.
Reading twixt the lines, I judge ye to be of the former category. Thank you kindly, I look forward to more cool oases in the Dumbeddown Desert.

Not very positive, bit of a slam to where Linux has gone since the community figured out that a mouse-driven GUI would usher in a whole new regime... and, I'm sorry to say, I agree. You said a lot there, and, as one recently returning to Linux only to find myself hopelessly newbyfied, I find your observations quite sound. Take heed, devs !
Unless.... hmmmm.... for the umpteenth time I find myself reminded of a gig as night auditor at a hotel many years ago, back when interpreting the data and compiling the report was deep juju. Chatting with the senior auditor (whom I had learned was moving on, and was not training a partner but a replacement), I confided that I had reduced the paperwork to 1/2 its original convoluted, cumbersome crapness and could perform the "6-hour" audit in less than 2 hours.
His reply has stayed with me all these years:
" Don't make it look too easy, or they won't need YOU any more."
A fine treatise on this sick, self-centered mentality that ushers in the current state of affairs in GB, Amerika, et al is in Michael Korda's book, "Power", the tenets of which have also ensconced themselves in the darker corners of my mind.
How do we keep this from happening, and reverse the effects to date, in Linuxworld?

Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy...... I need to tip a stout or two with you. I like aliens, some of my best friends are off-world.
I still remember the flavour of your first post to one of my plaintive cries; equally succinct, equally brash, and precipitating that same nagging feeling that there are people out there who calmly zen their way through this mad quagmire with ease... not, as they would be the first to insist, by dint of superior intelligence, but simply because they accept Linux, eschew Windows, and find their journey to be comfortable enough.
I salute your stand for sanity. I envy your position, of which you seem so assured. But I despair, feeling it is too late for those of us who have been infected with the mouse-virus, that we can never achieve that same perspective that dangles like an ethereal carrot before our hungered eyes when you say stuff like that.
Could it be.... truth?
Course correction....... say, J, how long you been a Linux man, anyway? Like... forever?

My Linux only use would be about 5 or 6 years.
But I've never liked any of the Microsoft stuff which I was forced to use at work.

The big secret (for me) is to use a decent GUI where it is most convenient, but use the CLI for repetitive tasks or where the GUI fails.

I'd suggest LMDE (a rolling update version of Mint, based on Debian) as a straightforward distro.

Ahhhh, that brings me some perspective... I dropped off-grid about 5 or 6 years ago, at which time I was a stone-cold Linux lover, having jumped on my Gnu and never looked back. Except to play MS games. Never could get WINE up-to-snuff.
So while it has been drifting back to CLI, I myself (being merely adrift) have missed out on the course change and now find myself facing that which deterred me (and many MS victims) from getting into Linux in the first place... while YOU, probably still in your youth and possessed of a sponge-like mind, have executed a fine tour of Linux starting at Mouse Point and gently sailing with the wind into The Return to Console Island.
This is the problem with old age, my venerable comrade... one can recall the names and faces of nearly everyone in their high-school graduation class, but nearly none of the names and faces at the grocery store one has utilised for the last six months. I could dive back into DOS and feel almost-at-home; I can still THINK in several forms of BASIC, and COBOL, which makes programming in same a mere exercise in referencing the syntax manual. But the thought of having to learn a new set of console commands (well, most of them new anyway) fills me with a dread akin to seeing the BloodMobile in front of my house. ( I am extremely needle-shy. Blood and gore are okay, but that sterile stainless needle EEEEYYYyyyyyyaahhhhhhhhhh!!!)
Since my respect for you rivals that which I feel for my own alter-ego, I am off to investigate LMDE; I am trusting you, Jeremy, don't dash my hopes and dreams as callously as I did that last ex-wife's.
And oh, btw... I have Puppy and 12.04.1 VM'd in Winblows, how tough is it to free them from their prisons, give them their own partitions as I understand it; and will they run better/faster? Thanx, mon guru.

Jeremy, here's what the first page of https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php has to say about their product:

" LMDE is less mainstream than Linux Mint, it has a much smaller user base, it is not compatible with PPAs, and it lacks a few features. That makes it a bit harder to use and harder to find help for, so it is not recommended for novice users.

LMDE is however slightly faster than Linux Mint and it runs newer packages. Life on the LMDE side can be exciting. There are no point releases in LMDE 2, except for bug fixes and security fixes base packages stay the same, but Mint and desktop components are updated continuously. When ready, newly developed features get directly into LMDE 2, whereas they are staged for inclusion on the next upcoming Linux Mint 17.x point release. Consequently, Linux Mint users only run new features when a new point release comes out and they opt-in to upgrade to it. LMDE 2 users don’t have that choice, but they also don’t have to wait for new packages to mature and they usually get to run them first. It’s more risky, but more exciting."

They unsold me right off the bat. A trepidacious, timorous turkey like me needs LESS excitement and risk.
I want my GNU back. Maybe I'll try that approach. Cautiously. Like the pansy-I-amsy.