On Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:30: -320800 John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks for all the suggestions. I finally nailed it. > > The ~/.local-original/share/applications folder for the new user had > only two files. My ~/local/share/applications folder has many > entries. I don't know what they do. Some appear to be part of the > Applications menu, but others clearly are not. And I also have > launchers in Applications that are not reflected in a file in this > folder. > > However, I was especially interested in a file called > metacity.desktop. I noted that the new user's original folder did not > contain this file. I tried to rename it, but Nautilus would not let > me. I certainly own the file and have rw permissions for it, but > Nautilus just wouldn't let me. No matter, as root from the command > line I renamed it metacity.desktop.old. Then I rebooted. And after > logging in metacity launched as it is supposed to. Everything else > seems to be working normally. > > I have no idea what rogue process created this file. > > It is a text file that can be opened with Gedit. Looking at the > contents I see nothing that says "don't launch metacity for this > user." > > If any of the Gnome users on this list have such a file, it would be > interesting to compare notes. I feel an obligation to file a bug > report, but I in order to make the bug report useful I need to figure > out what is the purpose of the file, what created it, and where it > went wrong. > John, I do have the ~/.local/share/applications folder, and the metacity file is in it. It's a simple text file. The contents are: [Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Encoding=UTF-8 Name=Metacity Type=Application ... <many lines of the form "Name[<language-specifier>]=Metacity"> ... Exec=metacity NoDisplay=true X-GNOME-WMSettingsModule=metacity X-GNOME-WMName=Metacity X-GnomeWMSettingsLibrary=metacity X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=metacity X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=general X-GNOME-Autostart-Phase=WindowManager X-GNOME-Provides=windowmanager X-GNOME-Autostart-Notify=true Name[en_US]=Metacity Nautilus shows the filename as "Metacity", but ls shows it as metacity.desktop (note the capitalization). Changing the name from the command line (mv metacity.desktop metacity.desktop.orig) changed the name as shown by ls. Nautilus, however, still showed it as Metacity. Changing the name with Nautilus, to Metacity.orig, showed the name changed there. Just to be stubborn, ls showed the name as metacity.desktop.orig. A little digging showed what is likely the reason. The last line of the file is "Name[en_US]=Metacity". If I change the filename using Nautilus, that line changes to "Name[en_US]=Metacity.orig". The actual filename, as shown by ls, does not change. It seems pretty obvious that this line is what Nautilus is reporting as the filename, at least on my system. Now, as to why Nautilus didn't want to let you change the name of your file, I'm not sure. Check the SELinux context for the file, that may be a problem. For that matter, check the context for the parent directory. I've had trouble occasionally where I couldn't change a file, even as root. The security context turned out to be the trouble. Here are the directory listings from my system: [da...@valeron applications]$ ls -d --context ../applications drwxr-xr-x dales dales unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0 ../applications [da...@valeron applications]$ ls --context metacity.desktop -rw-rw-r-- dales dales unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0 metacity.desktop Now that I think about it, SELinux contexts could be a problem waiting to bite you. If you're bringing files into Fedora from another distro, they almost certainly don't have the right security contexts, assuming that they have any at all. Nautilus can set the contexts for you. Move to your /home directory and right-click on your user directory. Select "Properties" and select the "Permissions" tab. Make sure that your folder and file permissions are set correctly (they probably are). Then, at the bottom of the panel, you'll see a line "SELinux Contexts" and a string widget. Make sure the settings are right (again, they probably are, but if not see mine, above), click the "Apply Permissions to Enclosed Files" button, and you should be good to go. That said, I *strongly* suggest reading up on SELinux. I found the man pages to be dry and rather rough going, but their info is good to have, since Fedora uses SELinux as part of its security setup. O'Reilly has a book on SELinux which is easier reading than the Linux man pages. Anyway, I hope that helped. --Dale _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
