LM9 Fluxbox RC - menu problems

[brainformat]

Hi! I have just installed LM9 Fluxbox RC. While system was booted form live CD, everything seemd to be fine and menu was "full". However, sice I've installed it, menu is empty, there is no any lines except "Exit" and few more. I have looked at menu fiel in .fuluxbox. It is empty as well. Does anyone know what happened?
Thanx a lot!

[shane]

From terminal, run

Code: Select all

mint-fm2 generate

This should generate the menu. If that doesn't work, delete ~/.fluxbox/menu and ~/.mint-fm2 and try it again.

Something similar had appeared once during testing with one of the testers... However, he was unable to reproduce it or give a reason how/why it happened. Neither could I find a cause. If you can reproduce this reliably, please do let us know.

For more info on using the menu, see http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/96

[brainformat]

It worked!
Only without icons, but that matter isn't so urgent.
Thanx a lot!

[Puzzler]

I can report the following:

Installed the LM9 Fluxbox RC on an old T30. Default language(english).
After installation I installed German language. After reboot some(not all) menu entries had gone, i.e. "Office".

Second PC:
After installing k9copy on an almost clean LM9 Fluxbox RC installation the Synaptic Package Manager removed from the menu entries. But it was still available via terminal.

Maybe both are just handling errors?!

[shane]

I can report the following:

Installed the LM9 Fluxbox RC on an old T30. Default language(english).
After installation I installed German language. After reboot some(not all) menu entries had gone, i.e. "Office".

Second PC:
After installing k9copy on an almost clean LM9 Fluxbox RC installation the Synaptic Package Manager removed from the menu entries. But it was still available via terminal.

Maybe both are just handling errors?!

In your 1st PC I am almost certain that the problem is caused by changing the language. Please generate the menu again with the command I gave above and see if there are any errors after that.

For you 2nd PC, can you archive the ~/.mint-fm2 folder and upload it here before regenerating the menu.

[Puzzler]

I completely reinstalled some different versions, thatswhy I can't upload the file anymore.
But I think I know the reason. k9copy installs the package KPackageKit, this one messes the fluxbox menu up.

Another "bug"(?) appeared:
After each startup the bottom-panel is layered by an transparent rectangle, without smoothed edges.
If I manually do a "fluxbox restart", it disappears.

Edit:
Menu for the T30 successfully generated.

edit2:

Made a screenshot of it:

[anderigs]

Hi
I just installed RC last night. Did my usual selection of preferred apps using a mix of apt-get and the new SW manager and then "found" synaptics in the System menu - I prefer this for cleaning up stuff I don't use - especially stuff taking up lots of space (also the new SW manager doesn't warn you when removing libraries that it is also removing automatically dependent applications!).
Well, anyway I *think* after deleting a bunch of stuff with synaptics all of my submenus were suddenly empty.
How can I best generate these? I don't quite get it from the tutorial which works fine in a way for generating the main .fluxbox/menu (well not really either as it doesn't generate any submenus).
I saw this previously with Helena fluxbox and know that this happened when my disk was full (I only have a eeepc 701g with 4GB of space so this happened often). But this time I do not think I was close to the limit.
Could it be there is a bug when deleting apps with synaptics?
Cheers
dumbfckr aka andE
PS: I GUESS the easiest way is to boot from usb again with live version and copy over and manually edit the new apps I added... This all happened BEFORE my backup rsync shell script ran of course

[shane]

Can you please archive the ~/.mint-fm2 folder and upload it. It should give me an idea of what is going on.

Running 'mint-fm2 generate' should give you a new menu... unless there really is some problem with the way it is generating the menu... I should be able to catch the problem if you upload the archive.

[anderigs]

Hi
I just managed I think to reproduce the problem and it does seem to be a synaptics problem - or whatever hooks into synaptics.
I did the following:
1. booted with live USB and copied complete .mint-fm2 directory and menu from .fluxbox
2. rebooted with installed fluxbox and copied these files into my home dir
3. I manually edited directly the .fluxbox/menu and also the .mint-fm2/submenu/Categories replacing all /home/mint with /home/ande.
4. Menu worked fine - I did not get round to adding or deleting apps from submenus
5. I then backed up my .mint-fm2 & fluxbox directories. Find them in b4broken.tar.
6. then I ran synaptics but was only looking at disk space used by some apps. I quit synaptics.
7. then I noticed all of my submenus had been deleted again. The main menu is fine.
You can now see this status in nowbroken.tar.

Am I not supposed to manually edit the menu and submenu files? Do I have to use a tool for this?
Cheers,
andE
PS: I will be on holiday for 6 days starting this evening and unlikely to be online in this time.

[shane]

You can edit any of the files except ~/.fluxbox/menu. This file the over written when the menu is regenerated or when there is change in the Categories to be included. However, the generation of this file can be completely configured by changing the settings in ~/.mint-fm2/mint-fm2.conf.

When you make changes you make to the submenu files, you should also change the 'tag' as explained in the documentation linked to above. This will prevent your changes from being overwritten.

Thanks for uploading the files. I'll try to see what I can do.

[anderigs]

Hi
looks like the problem also is somehow connected to logging in and out (or maybe it's reboot - but I think its more login / logout). Are the menus regenerated at login.
I did a grep -i for mint in my fluxbox/startup script and here is the output minus comments:
----
killall conky python nm-applet system-config-printer-applet bluetooth-applet xfce4vino pyvolume xscreensaver mintUpdate
mintfb-randr restore &
cd /usr/lib/linuxmint/mint-fm2 && mint-fm2 start
mintDesktop.sh &
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintUpdate/mintUpdate.py &
mintinput1 &
---
As even now when I make sure the $HOME/.mint-fm2/submenus are there - then do a logout and log back in the submenu files "vanish" - this is now without starting synaptics.
Cheers,
andE

[rufong]

From terminal, run

Code: Select all

mint-fm2 generate

This should generate the menu. If that doesn't work, delete ~/.fluxbox/menu and ~/.mint-fm2 and try it again.

Something similar had appeared once during testing with one of the testers... However, he was unable to reproduce it or give a reason how/why it happened. Neither could I find a cause. If you can reproduce this reliably, please do let us know.

For more info on using the menu, see http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/96

installed mint 9, FB RC from usb-drive
did updates, activated hardware drivers
1st: used synaptics to remove network-manager, network-manager-gnome, installed wicd
FB menus/categories listed, but empty of individual programs[gone], system programs empty[gone] as well, FB menu, config categories intact
attempted to regenerate after deleting ~/.fluxbox/menu and ~/.mint-fm2, just gave a garbled FB menu, all categories gone, program entries, system

2nd: used terminal[as previous poster thought it was synaptics related], apt-get to delete to remove network-manager, network-manager-gnome, installed wicd
FB menus/categories listed, but empty of individual programs[gone], system programs empty[gone] as well, FB menu, config categories intact
attempted to regenerate after deleting ~/.fluxbox/menu and ~/.mint-fm2, just gave a garbled FB menu, all categories gone, program entries, system

3rd: re-installed mint9 FB RC; backed up, FB and mint-fm2 config files, have yet to try installing wicd, removing network-manager, network-manager-gnome

rebooting, logging in/out multiple times had no effect at any stage..

[shane]

Thanks rufong. I was able to reproduce the problem. I am going through it line by line... tedious... but hopefully we can sort this out.

[shane]

I think I have found the possible cause. Please try modifying the file /usr/lib/linuxmint/mint-fm2/functionLibrary at line 290

From:

Code: Select all

# GENERATE THE MENU CACHE
createMenuCache() {
  debug tempPathReset
  debug debugMenuCacheGen
  $MENUCACHEGEN
  tmp=$(cat $LISTNEW)
  echo "$tmp" | sed '1,/Xfce;/d' > $LISTNEW
  debug tempCustomPathSet
}

To: [edit] Please see next post. This will break in some situations.

Code: Select all

# GENERATE THE MENU CACHE
createMenuCache() {
  debug tempPathReset
  debug debugMenuCacheGen
  $MENUCACHEGEN
  tmp=$(cat $LISTNEW)
  echo "$tmp" | sed '1,/^$/d' > $LISTNEW    #<--- Here is the important change!
  debug tempCustomPathSet
}

Then run

Code: Select all

mint-fm2 generate

[shane]

After some testing I found that the change I mentioned earlier still breaks in other situations. This should work better:

Code: Select all

# GENERATE THE MENU CACHE
createMenuCache() {
  debug tempPathReset
  debug debugMenuCacheGen
  $MENUCACHEGEN
  tmp=$(cat $LISTNEW)
  echo "$tmp" | sed '1,/^+Applications/{/^+Applications/b; /^/d;}' > $LISTNEW
  debug tempCustomPathSet
}

[rufong]

After some testing I found that the change I mentioned earlier still breaks in other situations. This should work better:

Code: Select all

# GENERATE THE MENU CACHE
createMenuCache() {
  debug tempPathReset
  debug debugMenuCacheGen
  $MENUCACHEGEN
  tmp=$(cat $LISTNEW)
  echo "$tmp" | sed '1,/^+Applications/{/^+Applications/b; /^/d;}' > $LISTNEW
  debug tempCustomPathSet
}

modified, going to remove netmgr, netmgr-gnome, install wicd
and c how it goes..

[rufong]

great work shan3!
i used lxterminal to remove the 2 pkgs, then install wicd.
rebooted and the FB menu is intact for all categories.
oh, u asked me to regenerate, so i did

Code: Select all

mint-fm2 generate

and all is still well.

thx again,
rufong
(now off to get the wheel to scroll volume and not need a restart of FB to hide the slider/mixer button)

[anderigs]

Hi
is this now in the downloadable fixes or do I have to still live with my workaround?
BTW: incase u r interested my workaround is to define all entries as user defined with the "#+#" feature - e.g.
[exec] (Catfish) {catfish --path=$HOME} </usr/share/icons/gnome-colors-common/16x16/actions/catfish.png> #+#-catfish.desktop
Cheers
andE

[shane]

I have informed Kendall of the bug and the fix. He is/will be working on it as time permits. This bug is present on v3.24... so I suppose any version after that will have the fix.