Messed up with .desktop files...

T3STY · #1 19th March 2012, 03:24 PM

This is what happens when you touch things you shouldn't touch.
I have been trying for some time to modify the names that the applications had in the gnome's "Applications" tab. I found alacarte and what I've done at first was only renaming the name of the applications. The result was very bad, many softwares that before existed in gnome's applications tab now are simply disappeared. I then restored the original configuration from alacarte using the restore button; but doing so I got back to the begginning. I have decided then to edit the .desktop files in .local/share/applications and usr/local/share/applications... by edit I mean rename, delete, edit the settings in .desktop file, move files from /usr to my.local folder... ahmm, in a word: a big mess.
Now I wish I have never done it... I can't open text files anymore because gedit is no longer listed in the applications; the same happens for most file formats, some applications kept disappearing from the gnome applications tab after renaming, and I really don't know how to rollback all of this (CTRL+Z won't help this time). The only good thing in this is that I'm still able to start applications from the terminal.

Can someone tell me if there's anything I could do to restore the situation, please?

***Gareth Jones*** · #2 19th March 2012, 06:13 PM

Did you back-up /usr/share/applications? If so restore it, otherwise I'd reinstall the affected packages to restore the standard .desktop files. Either way, delete .local/share/applications.

Gareth

T3STY · #3 19th March 2012, 07:35 PM

No, I didn't make any backup of both directories. Anyway, I didn't even think of reinstalling packages; i knew this was a way but it would take too long and there are too many packages to reinstall. I tried deleting /usr/local/share/applications but it didn't work; it also gave me an error on loggin in saying that the session could not be started and I wasn't able to login in gnome.
Then I thought I could get those .desktop files from somewhere else, like a live CD or another installation. I copied back most of the .desktop files from the Fedora installation I have on my pendrive. Now I'll have to manually create the remaining .desktop files for some other applications, I can handle that.

Thank you for the help Gareth

***Gareth Jones*** · #4 19th March 2012, 07:59 PM

Is it /usr/share/applications or /usr/local/share/applications that's the problem?

"yum reinstall"-ing /usr applications shouldn't take too long (it's only the end-user programs that are affected, not the libraries etc.). For /usr/local, by which I assume you mean installed-from-source, have a look in the source tarballs if you still have them. Templates for the .desktop files should be included, and if you just run the ./configure commands you should be able to do something like "make prog.desktop" in the appropriate directory to save having to fill them in by hand.

T3STY · #5 19th March 2012, 09:14 PM

The problem is (was) with both of them

yum reinstall ... works fine, I've restored some other applications. But yes, there were a few ones that I've installed them from source. At first I have manually created .desktop files but some I couldn't make them work. But I could make them work by using ./configure and make _app_.desktop.

Now I have back all my .desktop files, thanks