Moving the Steam Folder on Linux, is Causing Users' Entire File Systems to Be Deleted

Users of Steam on GNU / Linux are Reporting that, Attempting to Move the Steam Folder - Something that, the GNU / Linux Steam Installer Doesn't Allow you to Set at the Time of Installation - is Leading to Everything Able to be Deleted Being Deleted Recursively from Root. First Entered as a Bug Report by the GitHub User 'keyvin', he Explained How he Tried to Move the Directory Somewhere Else and Symlink it to the Original Location. In Almost Every Use Case under the Sun, this usually Works without Too Many Problems. Unfortunately for Keyvin, however, a Bug in Steam Proceeded to Delete Everything it was Able to on his Computer - Even the Content on his 3TB External Storage. Another GitHub User, 'd00fy', Mentioned How he had just Lost his Entire Home Directory, by just Starting steam.sh with STEAM_DEBUG=1.


It Tries to Look for the Steam Folder and When it Can't do that, it just Returns a Forward Slash - a Forward Slash would Represent Root. For those Unfamiliar with the rm Command When Used with the -rf Flags, it Basically Breaks Down into "remove all files, protected or otherwise, recursively and without asking for confirmation on each file". Starting from the / Directory, or Root, it is the *nix Equivalent of Deleting your C: Drive. It Can't Delete Everything but, it does Manage to Delete a User's Home Directory, Media and Similar - Pretty Much Everything Important. Luckily, however, the Beauty of Open Source is that, the Problem has Already been Isolated and Patches are Already Being Discussed. For the Time Being, though, Try to Avoid Intrusively Playing with or Debugging Steam -not Unless you Have Sufficient Backups, Anyway.




Info Sources:

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671#issuecomment-70021818

https://github.com/lrusak/steam_latest/pull/1