Missing the Application menu in Gnome

Message

weziw · Post by **weziw** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 5:33 pm

I have a fresh install of Gentoo on virtual box on a Vista host. I followed the the install instructions from http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/h ... t=1&chap=1 and emerged gnome from http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gnome-config.xml which took a couple of days. Gnome is up and running but I do not have the Application menu and if it had not been such a long process I would have reinstalled. So is there a way I can fix this problem without running emerge gnome again?

Mike Hunt · Post by **Mike Hunt** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 7:02 pm

Do you have this symlink?

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# ls -l /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 23 Jul 29 19:39 /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu -> gnome-applications.menu

and do you have $HOME/.config/menus/gnome-applications.menu ?

weziw · Post by **weziw** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:04 pm

Thanks for the reply. I do not have those files here are the folder listings:

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~ $ ls -las /etc/xdg/menus/                                   
total 36
4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Nov  3 07:16 .
4 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Nov  1 03:45 ..
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 30 22:51 applications-merged
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  407 Oct 30 22:50 ggz.menu
8 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4634 Nov  1 06:41 gnome-applications.menu
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  488 Nov  1 12:17 gnome-screensavers.menu
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3218 Nov  3 07:15 gnomecc.menu
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1387 Nov  1 06:41 settings.menu
~$

The second folder is empty:

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~ $ ls -las ~/.config/menus/  
total 8
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 weziw weziw 4096 Nov  3 08:48 .
4 drwxr-xr-x 5 weziw weziw 4096 Nov  4 10:08 ..

I am not sure how to correct this though where would I get the files to put in manually or what command can I run to build them.

Thanks again for the direction

weziw · Post by **weziw** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:57 pm

It is now working! Looking at your post, here is what I did:

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cp /etc/xdg/menus/gnome-applications.menu /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu

And now my "Applications" menu is populated and works fine. Thanks again!

einbisschen · Post by **einbisschen** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:12 pm

better create applications.menu as a symbolic link:

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ln -s gnome-applications.menu applications.menu

so that applications.menu is changed when gnome-applications.menu is edited by the system.

maybe new installed applications will not appear in the menu until you copy the file again...

weziw · Post by **weziw** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 10:20 pm

Ok, I will try that. Thanks for the input!

dage · Post by **dage** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 10:45 pm

thank you Mike Hunt, I have the same problem two, I created the symbolic link like you've written and it works perfectly.

Best regards

Minh

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 4:13 am

Is there a bug about that ?

Mike, you should contact mrpouet from the Gnome team actually.

Mike Hunt · Post by **Mike Hunt** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 5:08 am

Done.

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:37 pm

Thanks

while1 · Post by **while1** » Tue Dec 08, 2009 9:52 pm

Thanks a billion for the pointer Mike Hunt! Couldn't understand why this happened to me but now everything is fine!

EvaSDK · Post by **EvaSDK** » Wed Dec 09, 2009 11:31 pm

This solution is wrong, please check http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/g ... pgrade.xml, section "GNOME and KDE menu file-collision"

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 12:22 am

EvaSDK wrote:This solution is wrong, please check http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/g ... pgrade.xml section "GNOME and KDE menu file-collision"

The problem was that XDG_MENU_PREFIX option was not well thought out (I could use other words but I will be nice)

When I first upgraded to gnome 2.26 I had to google around and find out what was wrong.
I did run across some debian discussions and that gave me the hint to fix the problem.

Using "gnome-" in /usr/share/ is well and good, but the way it was done also caused
it to be applied to things within ~/.config and ~/.local directories and files under them,
which it should never have done, since those were strictly per user.

Anyway what has been suggested has worked for the great majority of users,
and by that very definition alone, I would say it is not wrong.

edit to add: I have since moved away from both gnome and kde so I don't have a problem with either.

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 1:15 am

Anon-E-moose wrote:edit to add: I have since moved away from both gnome and kde so I don't have a problem with either.

You are using what now ? XFCE ???

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 1:52 am

d2_racing wrote:
Anon-E-moose wrote:edit to add: I have since moved away from both gnome and kde so I don't have a problem with either.
You are using what now ? XFCE ???

Yes, I'm using xfce. Waiting to see what the next version will look like,
hopefully they will learn from both kde and gnome upgrade mistakes
and just take their time.

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 4:59 pm

Xfce 4.8 should be nice, at least I think.

If not, I'm gonna try Gnome 2.28 and I think that Gnome 3.0 will be like KDE 4.x, it seems to have a lot of new cool 3D feature that will for sure crash my testing box

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 6:12 pm

on the crashing

I have no real need for 3d features and I don't really like
how big kde/gnome have gotten and it seems like no end to it.
The only gnome app I put back after removing all of gnome was
gcalctool, and even that wanted to pull in 3-4 other packages
and it's just a calculator.

xfce offers full transparency, which is about the only "neat" feature that I care for.