Working directory not under home directory in Linux - howto

[jomabrueloe]

I have a NTFS partition on my computer, which I share between Linux (Mint14) and Windows 7. I would like to make one directory on this partition my working directory for LibreOffice (on both systems). It should also be enabled for all Linux users. My Libreoffice (3.5.4) on Linux just allows directories under my “home” directory. I can switch to another directory, but after confirmation the “home”-path ist restored.

[jomabrueloe]

Using a symlink doesn’t work (tried with different scenarios) No other entry but /home/jo does work in the “working directory dialog” (error in Mint ?)

[mahfiaz]

If you happen to want to just share .libreoffice and maybe Documents directory then you could symlink these to the actual NFS location. Or why not symlink whole /home/myaccount directory?

[qubit1]

@jomabrueloe – Related: Under what specific scenarios did you try to use a symlink?

[mahfiaz]

Let’s say your NTFS is mounted at /media/jomabrueloe/Windows and your HOME is /home/jomabrueloe, then run this in your terminal:

ln -s /media/jomabrueloe/Windows /home/jomabrueloe/Windrive

or maybe this:

ln -s /media/jomabrueloe/Windows/Users/JB/Documents /home/jomabrueloe/Documents

[qubit1]

@jomabrueloe wrote:

My Libreoffice (3.5.4) on Linux just allows directories under my “home” directory. I can switch to another directory, but after confirmation the “home”-path ist restored.

Just to confirm, this works for you, right?

1. mkdir ~/foo
2. Set working directory to ~/foo
3. Restart LO, confirm that ~/foo is the working dir

And this doesn’t…

1. mkdir /var/foo
2. chown jomabrueloe.jomabrueloe /var/foo # username as appropriate…
3. Set working directory to /var/foo
4. Restart LO, confirm that /var/foo is NOT the working dir

[qubit1]

@jomabrueloe – update?