On Sat, 2009-08-15 at 10:31 +0100, Anne Wilson wrote:On Saturday 15 August 2009 05:23:59 Steven F. LeBrun wrote:After obtaining a list of the hidden directories used by gnome, I was able to rename existing directories, log out, log back in and see if the desktop icons were displayed. Through a series of trials and errors, the problem was in my old ~/.local/share/applications directory. My old version contained 395 entries and the new one contained 2. What is not solved is exactly which of the 394 files is the problem. Almost all the files in the broken directory are desktop configuration files along with a couple of list (text) files. I did copy the wine subdirectory from my broken applications directory to the working one without a problem while resolving missing wine applications that were installed.General tip for handling this kind of thing - 1) copy your existing ~/.local/share/applications directory to something like ~/.local/share/applications_sav 2) restore one directory from the broken directory 3) if there are problems, you have identified the source. Copy ~/.local/share/applications_sav back to ~/.local/share/applications 3_sub) create the directory that you wanted to copy back and restore essential files from it, one at a time, until it breaks. Now you have the real culprit, and must recreate that one from scratch. 4) repeat as necessary - don't forget to start from 1) so that you always have the partially restored and still working version. Slow, yes, but you will get back most of what you had. Making a guess at your applications most likely to have been in use when the problem occurred would be a good starting place. Identifying the problem(s) at the beginning of the process is less nerve-wracking than getting a long way and still being unsure. :-)Alternatively, use a binary search (divide the candidates into two disjoint subsets, test one, then the other, reject the good one, subdivide the bad into two subsets and repeat recursively, see Search Algorithms 101). Requires careful bookkeeping but is potentially a lot faster. Also useful for finding broken extensions in Firefox :-) poc
Quote: "Behold the lowly turtle," the astronaut had quoted.
"He only makes progress when he sticks his neck out."
-- Ben Bova, from "Return to Mars"