On Sat, Jul 28, 2001 at 11:53:51PM -0700, Timothy Bolz wrote:
> Ok, I managed to mess up gnome in my home directory. I created a new user
> account and tried gnome with that user and everything is fine. What happens
> is gnome starts and the menu's and everything appears then they disappear.
> The only thing on the desktop are the desktop icons. I know it's fixable. I
> was thinking it's in the .gnome directory. Has anyone run into a similiar
> problem and how did you resolve it. I'll try searching the web for some
> answers but I thought someone on our list could help.
>
>
> Tim
>
I don't use gnome, but in a situation like this, I usually compare what
works with what doesn't. Sometimes it can be really frustrating, like
when you have no idea what you're really doing. However, even if I can't
get it figured out, I know more about the things I'm using.
Like I said, I don't use gnome, I don't know what the files in ~/.gnome
look like, or what they're for, but I bet you can find the problem in
a few simple steps->
diff -b -u -r /home/gnome-user/.gnome /home/tim/.gnome > /tmp/gnome.diff
This compares the files in /home/gnome-user/.gimp with corresponding
files in /home/tim/.gnome and dumps the result into /tmp/gnome.diff.
split -p "^diff" /tmp/gnome.diff gnome_diff-
The unified diff at /tmp/gnome.diff contains "diffs" for however
many files were different. The "diffs" start with a line like
"diff -u -r file1 file2". This is a bit hard to read. The split
command above "splits" /tmp/gnome.diff into separate diffs for each
file. The diffs will be named gnome_diff-aa, gnome_diff-ab, etc,
and will be in your current working directory.
Hopefully, you have some idea of what files you changed. Maybe you
even know some of the text you changed. If you do know some specific
info, then 'grep' is your friend. Guessing can work remarkably well
also.
grep known_info gnome_diff-*
Now you should have a pretty narrow list of files that contain both
what works, and what doesn't.
Of course, this won't work in every situation. It's possible that some
setting in one file depends on a certain setting in another file. The
steps above won't tell you that. The more differences in the files,
the harder it becomes, which is why one should always back-up known
working configurations before making changes.
Also, read your system's manual pages for diff, split and grep.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
PS Might I suggest 'BlackBox'? 1 config file = easy to maintain
