<SOLVED> All items disappear in Menu

[snowtears0802]

<SOLVED>

Hi everyone,

I am new for Linux & Mint.

Hereon I got one issue regarding Cinnamon Menu, could you pls spend some time support me? Thanks in advance!

The purpose is, i want to put a shortcut in the Menu list for my convenience. therefore i did the following steps:

1. Right click Menu and select "Configure", see attached pic 1;
   
   (Click on screenshot to enlarge. Press <alt><cursor left> to return here)
   .
2. Select "Open Menu editor" in the window poped out, see attached pic 2;
   
   (Click on screenshot to enlarge. Press <alt><cursor left> to return here)
   .
3. Edit the Menu as i want in the "Main Menu", see attached pic 3;
   
   (Click on screenshot to enlarge. Press <alt><cursor left> to return here)
   .
4. But due to unknown reason, the window was closed automatically and my operation terminated;

then i found that all my items disappeared in the menu except one "Application" without any contents inside, see pic 4;

(Click on screenshot to enlarge. Press <alt><cursor left> to return here)
.
i try to repeat the steps above, but there is no response when i click "Open Menu editor";

however, i can start "Mozo" via terminal, see attached pic 3;

currently the issue is still open and i have to check the command name in internet and then start them via terminal..

My system info could be found in pic 5;

(Click on screenshot to enlarge. Press <alt><cursor left> to return here)
.
Appreciate your support!

[Cosmo.]

There do exist no attachments. Also you missed to say, which version of Mint.

[snowtears0802]

Hello Cosmo,

Attachment failed, i re-uploaded it.
Version of Mint is also included (18.2)

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Cosmo.]

You will get better response, if you provide images in a way as it is supposed to be: As clickable links.

[snowtears0802]

Haha u r right…,and I wanna that, too…

Actually this forum only allow 3 attachments and I have 5 images…

I will try to figure out if there's anything wrong with my settings.

I will update it if possible…

Thanks for your tip…

[Cosmo.]

Upload the pics to something like imgur and link them in the post.

[karlchen]

<moderator on>
Inserted the images from the attached .tar.gz file via tags in the initial post.
Snowtears0802, feel free to tell me to undo or to reformat the post in whichever way you choose.
</moderator off>

[snowtears0802]

Hello Karlchen,

Appreciate your support and that is what i want.

[Cosmo.]

To my understanding the picture 3 is not taken from your system, as you said, that you cannot open the menu editor. Do you confirm? (I ask, because there is a strange detail in the picture, but if this is not really your system, we do not need to deal with it.) On the other side: What do you mean with Mozo and how is it related to that, what picture 3 shows?

As a step for investigation do the following (the purpose is to see, if there are ownership problems in your user account):
Mark the following command and press ctrl-c

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find $HOME ! -user $USER -type f

open a terminal and press ctrl-shift-V
Mark the complete result inclusive the command with the mouse and press ctrl-shift-C
In the forum click the Code-button above the text box, than press ctrl-v.

Report in case, that there is no output.

[snowtears0802]

Hello Cosmo,

To your first question, I really got this picture from my system. However, I got this picture after the issue occurred; (Regarding how... pls see my explanation below)

Regarding Mozo, I did some searching in my local search engine before I raised this topic here, and it is said that Cinnamon uses Mozo to manage the main menu as the menu editor, so i tried typing "mozo" in terminal and pic 3 appeared.
Based on that, i got the capture.

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dante@dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ $ mozo
Gtk-Message: GtkDialog mapped without a transient parent. This is discouraged.

See below manual:

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MOZO(1)                                                                                                      General Manual                                                                                                      MOZO(1)

NAME
       Mozo - MATE Menu Editor

SYNOPSIS
       mozo

DESCRIPTION
       Mozo is a menu editor for MATE using the freedesktop.org menu specification. It is a fork of Alacarte.

Regarding your investigation, pls refer to the result below:

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dante@dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ $ find $HOME ! -user $USER -type f
find: ‘/home/dante/.cache/dconf’: Permission denied
find: ‘/home/dante/.gvfs’: Permission denied

Thanks!

[Cosmo.]

I see now. Mozo seems to be a part of the fallback mode for Cinnamon (originally a Mate-component). If I launch it I get a similar result as you with the strange detail. Did you ever get a notice, that Cinnamon is running in fallback mode?

Regarding the ownership question. This has in any case to get corrected (although I cannot promise, that this alone will solve the original problem). Do this:
Mark the following command completely and make sure, that you do not miss any sign, than press ctrl-c

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find /home/$SUDO_USER ! -user $SUDO_USER -exec chown $SUDO_USER:$SUDO_USER '{}' \;

Open a terminal and enter

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sudo -i

and press the Enter-key; you get prompted for your password, enter it.
Now still in the same terminal press ctrl-shift-V
Run this command and wait until it has finished. It does not produce a readable output.
Press twice ctrl-d
Immediately log off and back into your account.

[snowtears0802]

Hello Cosmo,

To your first questions, sorry to say that I didn't prepare for any accidents, therefore I didn't notice if there is any info related to fallback mode;

Regarding your solution, I have tried that and it fails and the issue is still not solved.

Pls refer to my process:

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dante@dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ $ sudo -i
[sudo] password for dante: 
dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ # find /home/$SUDO_USER ! -user $SUDO_USER -exec chown $SUDO_USER:$SUDO_USER '{}' \;
dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ # logout
dante@dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ $ 

Then press ctrl-d second time, Gnome Terminal is closed.
Then, log out and log in.. no change.

Thanks!

[Cosmo.]

I don't think, that my command failed. As I described there is no output and as you described it run through without an error message.
You may run the command from this post again and it should come out empty or at most with only the first item (dconf in .cache) noted; this is a special case, which is caused by a long standing bug in Mint, but harmless.

I also wrote above, that I am not sure, whether the correction of permissions will solve the original issue. (In any case correcting this mistake was worth it.)

To investigate further create a fresh new test account in your system. Log out of the main account and into the test account and try to open the menu editor with the usual way. By doing so we find out, whether the cause of the trouble is in your account or in the system.

[snowtears0802]

Hello Cosmo,

I have tried your first command and it come out empty.

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dante@dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ $ find $HOME ! -user $USER -type f
dante@dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ $ 

And I also create a new account.
Under the new account, I have correct menu, I can open the menu editor. Seems everything is correct and normal under my new account.
The root cause of the issue is from my account.

Thanks!

[Cosmo.]

So we know that the culprit is in your account, not in the system.

Open the menu editor via Mozo (like in picture 3 at the top) and click the button to Revert.

[snowtears0802]

Hello Cosmo,

Tried but there is no change...T_T

[Cosmo.]

Try this:

Open the file manager and make hidden files visible (ctrl-h). Now - in your home - rename the folder .config to .config.bck and also accordingly the folder .local. Immediately log off and back into the account. Both folders get newly created with default values; you can easily delete them, when you want to revert the renaming. Both folders are the most suspicious places, where the problematic setting could be stored.

[snowtears0802]

Hello Cosmo,

Thank you for your support that my issue is solved!

here are for our reference:

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dante@dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ $ mv .config .config.bak
dante@dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ $ mv .local .local.bak
dante@dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ $ ls -ld .conf* .loca*
drwxr-xr-x 33 dante dante 4096 Dec 11 23:21 .config.bak
drwxr-xr-x  3 dante dante 4096 Oct  8 02:54 .local.bak
dante@dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ $ 

Then logout and login

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dante@dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ $ ls -ld .con* .lo*
drwxr-xr-x 14 dante dante 4096 Dec 13 21:49 .config
drwxr-xr-x 33 dante dante 4096 Dec 11 23:21 .config.bak
drwxr-xr-x  3 dante dante 4096 Dec 13 21:48 .local
drwxr-xr-x  3 dante dante 4096 Oct  8 02:54 .local.bak
dante@dante-ThinkPad-T460 ~ 

Although I lost some of the setting of my applications due to config and local have been regenerated, especially my Chinese input, I think it worth it compared with reinstalling the system or .deb.

Appreciate if you could explain more about the issue for deep learning.

Thank you!

[Cosmo.]

As I said already some posts above we had reached the state to know, that the culprit was not in the system. So a new installation was surely not necessary. In the worst case - and sometimes this happens also - creating a new account for permanent usage would have been enough.

Those 2 folders are the most suspicious places, where a problem is placed. It is hard to say, what exactly it was, at least not with some more and time-intensive investigation. The most important point is, that we got it solved, that is, what counts.

Please do other users a favor and edit the starting point and add <SOLVED> to the title.