Missing desktop icons and no mouse clicks

Beginner

Location: Montreal

Saturday, February 12th 2005, 9:48pm

The subject says it all - I am missing all my desktop icons and can no longer click on the desktop..or more accurately when I do NOTHING happens.

I've been using GNOME for a while so "something" happened in between my vists to KDE. By the way I still can't decide between KDE and GNOME but this may make up my mind for me.

Thanks to all

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jacek

Trainee

Posts: 105

Location: Warsaw, Poland

Occupation: Student

2

Saturday, February 12th 2005, 11:14pm

RE: Missing desktop icons and no mouse clicks

Quoted

Originally posted by frankzen
The subject says it all - I am missing all my desktop icons

The icons you had on your desktop, were probably from ~/Desktop directory[1]. Do you still have one?

Quoted

and can no longer click on the desktop..or more accurately when I do NOTHING happens.

Did you mean right-click?

Does the kicker works (that panel with K-menu and other icons)?
Did you install or upgrade any libraries recently?

Quoted

I've been using GNOME

Hmm... never trust a gnome. It's very tricky. I wouldn't be suprised, if it ate your icons.

[1] They could have been in other places too, but it is hard to remove them from there by accident.

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "jacek" (Feb 12th 2005, 11:16pm)

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frankzen

Beginner

Posts: 5

Location: Montreal

3

Saturday, February 12th 2005, 11:55pm

RE: Missing desktop icons and no mouse clicks

Quoted

Originally posted by jacek

Quoted

Originally posted by frankzen
The subject says it all - I am missing all my desktop icons

The icons you had on your desktop, were probably from ~/Desktop directory[1]. Do you still have one?

I have a .directory in /Desktop but it's only 4 or 5 lines long.

Quoted

and can no longer click on the desktop..or more accurately when I do NOTHING happens.

Did you mean right-click?

right/left/middle - nothing works

Does the kicker works (that panel with K-menu and other icons)?

Yes panels are fine.

Did you install or upgrade any libraries recently?

Nope not for KDE - I upgraded GNOME a few days ago.

Quoted

I've been using GNOME

Hmm... never trust a gnome. It's very tricky. I wouldn't be suprised, if it ate your icons.

[1] They could have been in other places too, but it is hard to remove them from there by accident.

Beats me - something is terribly foobar'ed I think.

Does the system not keep a backup someplace ??

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jacek

Trainee

Posts: 105

Location: Warsaw, Poland

Occupation: Student

4

Sunday, February 13th 2005, 12:33am

RE: Missing desktop icons and no mouse clicks

Quoted

Originally posted by frankzen
I have a .directory in /Desktop but it's only 4 or 5 lines long.

Could you check the creation and modification dates for that .desktop file and ~/Desktop directory? Aren't they close to the GNOME update date?

Quoted

Does the system not keep a backup someplace ??

Unfortunately backups are so important, that they are left to the administrator to do them.

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frankzen

Beginner

Posts: 5

Location: Montreal

5

Sunday, February 13th 2005, 1:22pm

RE: Missing desktop icons and no mouse clicks

Quoted

Originally posted by jacek

Quoted

Originally posted by frankzen
I have a .directory in /Desktop but it's only 4 or 5 lines long.

Could you check the creation and modification dates for that .desktop file and ~/Desktop directory? Aren't they close to the GNOME update date?

Neither is close to the update date. Both are more recent.

Its the inability to click on the desktop (and create new icon-launchers) that bothers me more than the loss of the icons.

The mouse works everywhere else so it looks like I am missing a critical l;ibrary or something.

Quoted

Does the system not keep a backup someplace ??

Unfortunately backups are so important, that they are left to the administrator to do them.

Well, that's true but of little help to me

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jacek

Trainee

Posts: 105

Location: Warsaw, Poland

Occupation: Student

6

Sunday, February 13th 2005, 2:52pm

RE: Missing desktop icons and no mouse clicks

Quoted

Originally posted by frankzen
The mouse works everywhere else so it looks like I am missing a critical l;ibrary or something.

If you were missing some library, kdesktop wouldn't run. You can check, if you have all the libraries it needs, with:

	Source code
1	ldd /usr/bin/kdesktop

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frankzen

Beginner

Posts: 5

Location: Montreal

7

Sunday, February 13th 2005, 8:09pm

RE: Missing desktop icons and no mouse clicks

Quoted
Originally posted by jacek

Quoted

Originally posted by frankzen
The mouse works everywhere else so it looks like I am missing a critical l;ibrary or something.

If you were missing some library, kdesktop wouldn't run. You can check, if you have all the libraries it needs, with:
Source code
1
ldd /usr/bin/kdesktop

Checked. No problem there. Like I said I am baffled, as GNOME which is running under Slackware 10.0 on the same partition is fine. I can't get KDE to respond to mouse clicks on the desktop. Must have something to do with the .directory file..but i even blew away the .kde dir and no improvement.
With the exception of no icons and no way to put icons on the desktop..everything else works fine ??

This is KDE 3.2 by the way - maybe I'll have a look at bugzilla.

Just discovered that when I run KDE as root, it works fine. Must be some sort or permissions
problem.

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "frankzen" (Feb 13th 2005, 11:27pm)

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