PIXEL desktop: Large menu folders crash taskbar

[agkozak]

I have a folder in my main menu ("Other") with many items in it; large enough that I normally have to scroll up and down to see everything.

With the new PIXEL desktop installed, if I go to that menu folder, it does not display, but rather the taskbar at the top of the screen seems to crash and relaunch. After around five crashes, the toolbar does not relaunch at all.

For now, as a workaround, I'll just disable the display of the large folder, but it looks as if there's a bug. Any suggestions for a better workaround would be most welcome.

But my compliments to those who've designed the new interface! It's otherwise very elegant; a good step forward.

[rubikwizard]

I was just about to post the same thing when I saw this post!

My 'Other' folder only has one or two items in it if I remember correctly, but I have exactly the same behavior. When the mouse moves over it the task bar disappears and then comes back. After several attempts it never comes back and I have to reboot.

This is an updated Jessie version and not a fresh install. I'm using a Rpi 3.

Apart from this issue I love the new modifications - Thank you!

[cjan]

same here.

[Peter Ryan]

Another same here!

I also, otherwise like the new updates too!

[Tzarls]

Same here. My "Other" sub menu (actually named "Otras" - in spanish) has only 4 elements: "Screen Lock" (or something along the liones, I'm translating the spanish name), "LibreOffice XSLT based...." (I can't see the whole name), "Logout" and "Where am I".

I've also noticed that if I enable or disable that category ("Other") using the Main Menu Editor the menu bar seems to crash and restart. That doesn't happen when I enable or disable anything in any of the other categories.

[Tzarls]

Just to add information about this error: If after disabling the "Other" category, I open again the Main Menu Editor (under Preferences) and click the "Cancel" button the Menu bar crashes and the "Other" category is re-enabled.

[Malman35]

Ah! so I'm not the only one. The updates are awesome but I am having the same issue. I had a bunch of stuff in the others tab as well. I just unchecked the others tab in the menu editor and it works fine now!

Just to add information about this error: If after disabling the "Other" category, I open again the Main Menu Editor (under Preferences) and click the "Cancel" button the Menu bar crashes and the "Other" category is re-enabled.

Oh bother. Tried that and got the same result.

[spl23]

OK, I've just tried putting a few applications into the Other menu on my clean PIXEL install, and I don't see this behaviour, so it looks as if it is down to some specific application causing the problem.

I'm going to try to debug this, but I need an easily reproducible test case. Can I please ask one of you to remove all the applications that appear in the Other category, and add them back one at a time until the problem appears? If you can then let me know a small set (ideally one...) of applications which cause the problem, I can investigate.

Many thanks in advance.

[NeilAlexanderHiggins]

Specifically, for the rank beginners, how do you want us to go about that task?

[NeilAlexanderHiggins]

By the way, my Pi3 is doing it too. I'm accessing the desktop via XTightVNC server (Pi3) and viewer (Ubuntu on AMD64). I have no idea what's in the Other menu ('cause I can't see it) - nothing I have added manually.

[spl23]

OK, I've found the problem - it's caused by .desktop files (which are what is shown in the menu) which don't contain an icon definition. A change I made to the menu plugin which corrected some incorrect icon fallback behaviour has resulted in a crash when a desktop file which does not define an icon is parsed.

All .desktop files really should define an icon - I only tested with .desktop files which have the correct icon line in them (as all those shipped with our standard image do), so I didn't see this in testing.

I'll need to release a fixed version of the menu plugin; this is going to take a week or so to get up onto apt so it can be installed. In the meantime, a simple fix is to add Icon= lines to the .desktop files which don't have them.

Any user-installed desktop files used in the menu are in the following directories:

/usr/local/share/applications
/usr/share/applications

Go into each of those directories in turn and do

Code: Select all

grep --include *.desktop -IRiL "Icon"

to find the files which don't have an Icon entry.

For each of those files, open them in an editor (you'll probably need to use sudo) and add the line

Code: Select all

Icon=application-x-executable

to the end of the file.

That should stop the crashes when the menu is accessed.

[lohtse]

same issues as reported here.

tried the solution provide but no joy..

decided to do the update on our two Zero's and other pi3 as well( we have 2x pi3 2xzero 1,pi2,1xPi b and 1xPi b+) all have DIFFERENT setups and software installed and the SAME issue so if it is app specific etc then it is a very broad range of software..

My other issue is newly installed apps are not always showing up and some previously install apps are nolonger showing up either...

is there a way we can revert to previous raspian versions WITHOUT having to do a reflash as the new version is PANTS at the mo

[spl23]

same issues as reported here.

tried the solution provide but no joy..

decided to do the update on our two Zero's and other pi3 as well( we have 2x pi3 2xzero 1,pi2,1xPi b and 1xPi b+) all have DIFFERENT setups and software installed and the SAME issue so if it is app specific etc then it is a very broad range of software..

No, it'll probably be one or two applications which you are installing on all your Pis. It should be easy enough to find, but if you aren't willing to do the diagnosis, I can't do much more to help - sorry.

[julianzeidler]

Here for those who do not want to modify the files by hand.
A handy one liner to add the Icon line where necessary:

Code: Select all

for file in $(find /usr/local/share/applications /usr/share/applications -name "*.desktop"); do if [[ -n $(grep -IRiL "Icon" $file) ]] ; then echo "Patching File: $file" ; sudo echo "Icon=application-x-executable">>$file; fi;  done

[spl23]

Here for those who do not want to modify the files by hand:
Here is a handy one liner to add the Icon line where necessary:

Code: Select all

for file in $(find /usr/local/share/applications /usr/share/applications -name "*.desktop"); do if [[ -n $(grep -IRiL "Icon" $file) ]] ; then echo "Patching File: $file" ; sudo echo "Icon=application-x-executable">>$file; fi;  done

Thanks very much for doing that - I was pretty sure it could be done in a single command, but didn't have time to work out what it was. Nice work!

[mob-i-l]

Here for those who do not want to modify the files by hand.
A handy one liner to add the Icon line where necessary:

Code: Select all

for file in $(find /usr/local/share/applications /usr/share/applications -name "*.desktop"); do if [[ -n $(grep -IRiL "Icon" $file) ]] ; then echo "Patching File: $file" ; sudo echo "Icon=application-x-executable">>$file; fi;  done

There is one problem with this line: if the file is a symbolic link it can't be updated. Maybe this could be fixed.

I tested this and it patched some files, but Other still gives the bug. I also extended the search using find / -name "*.desktop" 2>/dev/null. In the end I had to remove Other using Main Menu Editor.

I have three applications in Other:
LibreOffice XSLT based filters: libreoffice %U
Logout: lxde-logout
ScreenLock: lxlock

These were there from before updating to PIXEL.

I also tried various other things: such as removing the items in Other using Main Menu Editor, but that didn't help.

[mob-i-l]

Any user-installed desktop files used in the menu are in the following directories:

/usr/local/share/applications
/usr/share/applications

Go into each of those directories in turn and do

Code: Select all

grep --include *.desktop -IRiL "Icon"

to find the files which don't have an Icon entry.

I could not get that to work, but if I quote like this it works:

Code: Select all

grep --include '*.desktop' -IRiL "Icon"

I then had to add the Icon-line with sudo nano libreoffice-xsltfilter.desktop. All desktop-files now have Icon, but Other still have the same problem with making the taskbar disappear.

[spl23]

I tested this and it patched some files, but Other still gives the bug. I also extended the search using find / -name "*.desktop" 2>/dev/null. In the end I had to remove Other using Main Menu Editor.

I have three applications in Other:
LibreOffice XSLT based filters: libreoffice %U
Logout: lxde-logout
ScreenLock: lxlock

These were there from before updating to PIXEL.

I also tried various other things: such as removing the items in Other using Main Menu Editor, but that didn't help.

OK, thanks for that - I'll investigate further with those applications and see if there is something else going wrong.

[spl23]

I have three applications in Other:
LibreOffice XSLT based filters: libreoffice %U
Logout: lxde-logout
ScreenLock: lxlock

OK, I've just checked lxde-logout, and that doesn't cause a problem on my image.
I've enabled display of lxlock, and that doesn't cause a problem. I did get a crash when I enabled display of the LO filters, but that went away when I added an Icon line to its file.

So none of those three applications cause problems on my image; whether hidden or shown, the Other menu displays fine.

Could I ask you to private message me with the directory listings of /usr/share/applications, /usr/share/local/applications and /usr/share/raspi-ui-mods/applications from your system - preferably with ls -l so I can see timestamps and sizes? Something in there is causing the problem, but I need to narrow it down a bit! Many thanks in advance.

One other thing to try - if you have used the menu editor, it makes copies of some files in ~/.local/share/applications - try moving all the desktop files out of that directory temporarily and see if that fixes the crash.

[mob-i-l]

Could I ask you to private message me with the directory listings of /usr/share/applications, /usr/share/local/applications and /usr/share/raspi-ui-mods/applications from your system - preferably with ls -l so I can see timestamps and sizes? Something in there is causing the problem, but I need to narrow it down a bit! Many thanks in advance.

One other thing to try - if you have used the menu editor, it makes copies of some files in ~/.local/share/applications - try moving all the desktop files out of that directory temporarily and see if that fixes the crash.

I sent PM with /usr/share/applications and /usr/share/raspi-ui-overrides/applications/. The others doesn't exist here.

I moved out from ~/.local/share/applications, but that didn't help even after reboot. There was only one file there: libreoffice-xsltfilter.desktop.

[spl23]

OK, I've been doing some digging - thanks to those who sent me their folder listings, which has helped a lot!

Try this...

After making sure you have an Icon line in all your .desktop files, as before, do the following:

rm -rf ~/.config/menus
rm -rf ~/.local/share/applications
rm -rf ~/.local/share/desktop-directories
rm -rf ~/.cache/menus

(Just in case, you might want to mv the directories elsewhere rather than deleting them - all they should hold is changes you have made with the menu editor though.)

Reboot - see what the Other category does now.

I managed to repeat the problem by installing Iceweasel - while its own menu entries are fine, it causes the entire system menu to rebuild from scratch, pulling every single menu item on the system into the Other menu - as some of these are hidden Debian menu entries which also have no icon, they cause the crash to happen as soon as the Other menu is opened. These hidden entries should never be seen, but it looks as if some packages call the update-menus script which does a complete reset of menus to the Debian defaults.

Try it and let me know if it helps!

[mob-i-l]

After making sure you have an Icon line in all your .desktop files, as before, do the following:

rm -rf ~/.config/menus
rm -rf ~/.local/share/applications
rm -rf ~/.local/share/desktop-directories
rm -rf ~/.cache/menus
[...]
Reboot - see what the Other category does now.

Unfortunately it doesn't work for me. I removed the folders and rebooted, but the bug with Other is still there. I sent in a PM with the desktop-files I could not edit, but they are outside the folders for desktop-files mentioned earlier.

[spl23]

OK, in that case I think I need to stop looking for a workaround and just get a fix into apt as soon as possible. The fix is already ready to go - hopefully we can get it into apt on Monday or Tuesday next week, and people will then be able to download it.

Apologies to everyone for the inconvenience.

[timjstone]

i had similar problems , but i also found .desktop files in /var/lib/menu-xdg/applications/menu-xdg

when i fixed them to, the other menu worked again

tim

[cjan]

i had similar problems , but i also found .desktop files in /var/lib/menu-xdg/applications/menu-xdg

when i fixed them to, the other menu worked again

tim

too many files on it, any script to do this?