Obsidian disappeared? (Linux)

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1

Can someone send help? I am trying to open Obsidian, or maybe not, I actually just want my files back.

Hello, I am an author twho has used Obsidian to plan her book. I had every single of my characters descriptions in my vault, as well as my book’s timeline (which is very complicated). I once had a graph view problem which I fixed by myself by creating a new vault. I simply imported all the files from my ex-vault (which were in my laptop) to my new vault.
I have been able to open all of these files in my laptop’s local “text” app and that is how I know it is possible to open them and find them outside of Obsidian.

Everything was going pretty well until yesterday, I was trying to write a new chapter and couldn’t remember the name of one character and when I tried to open Obsidian… boom, nothing. I see the icon appearing at the bottom of my screen like the app is launching, then it just disappears and the app doesn’t open. I tried a couple times and it didn’t work. Then, I started searching for my files in my local files app and they just don’t show. I’m not a big tech girl anymore, but actually, I noticed that there are no files regarding Obsidian in my laptop. It is just like the app had never been downloaded. And I never did anything with it, not even TOUCHING it since last time, which was approximately a month ago, when immense pain I wrote my book’s whole timeline on there…

The only thing I have left is an empty “Obsidian” file located in my Google Drive. No .md files are showing.

Things I have tried

  • Well, nothing apart from what’s in that message, I’m really not experienced in this kind of things…

Thanks so much to the person who will help.

2

That sounds rough! Which Linux distribution do you use? And how did you install Obsidian? (Via Software Center, downloaded the .deb file, etc.)

That info might be helpful for folks to suggest troubleshooting steps.

1 Like
3

Have you been using Google drive as the place of of your vault? If so, you might look into its backup variants.

And if/when you locate the files, be sure to read up on how to setup Google drive to avoid synchronisation issues.

4

Actually, I don’t quite remember… I think I installed it via the “terminal” thing, I ran multiple commands, I think I followed a tutorial that included “sudo apk” things, and a gifthub link at some point…

5

I thought I didn’t but seeing the Obsidian file in my Google drive makes me doubt. I’ll try that, thank you.

6

Guys I was just hopeless trying to open my Obsidian, looking again at this forum and searching for my files everywhere when I just simply tried to open Obsidian again for the 100th time… and it opened. The quality is very low and the screen is very “microwave quality” but it opened! I’m so happy, I went through my files and realised I really would never have remembered the info I forgot about my book. UGH, SO HAPPY. Thanks so much to the people who tried helping.

7

Linux does this ‘microwave quality’ thing for me as well, it is so annoying! Like all my apps are just chilling there, looking amazing, and then there is just that one app that looks… sadly horrible!