Lost Desktop Icons in F11 [Partially Solved]

[Anne Wilson]

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. 
:-)

Anne
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