Data not copied over

[popey]

Copied over from signalapp/Signal-Desktop#1798 (comment)

" I am having some trouble with this snap package. On my system, I have to use the --classic switch because otherwise the app will fail to start. So I have ~/snap/signal-desktop and within that, there's a folder "83" and a folder "90". Back when I installed it, it was only "83" there and within that folder, the app created a .config/Signal directory to store the settings and messages.
But after the app got updated and the "90" folder appeared, the .config/Signal directory was not copied over to the "90" folder. I had to manually do this in order for the updated version to access the saved conversations. I assume I will need to do this again once Signal gets updated the next time."

[popey]

@Natanji filed this originally. So, two points here.

Apologies for not setting up this repo with an issue tracker. I have now added this link to the store page to direct people here.

On the subject of your actual issue. We don't support running non-classic snaps using --classic. This will cause the application to behave in strange and unpredictable ways. It also breaks confinement.

I suspect what happened is that you installed revision 83 as a classic snap. Signal would then have had access to your "real" home directory, rather than being confined to putting its config in ~/snap/signal/desktop/(revision). As a result of the data being in home, there was nothing to copy over once revision 90 was released last week. Resulting in your 90 directory being empty and you having to manually copy over.

I'd recommend doing a snap remove signal-desktop then snap install signal-desktop and re-login to Signal. Let me know if it fails in any way at that point, but please don't use --classic.

[merlijn-sebrechts]

Closing this as it's a known issue with Snapd. This response contains a workaround:

#8 (comment)