Categories disappear after editing

[MR Zenwiz]

I noticed after installing Xubuntu 14.04.1 at home, there were a whole slew of entries missing on the system menus (the mouse button).

When I brought up the menu editor, menulibre, it showed me lots of things that should have been on the menus as they are marked as "on" but most of them do not appear in the menus at all.

I made some changes in the Other and System menus, and they both disappeared from the menus altogether. I had to re-edit them and then log out and log back in to get them, but they don't stay. The Other menu has disappeared again and I haven't gotten it back by the log-out-log-in method.

This is very Windows style and it simply does not work.

I have tried to find the menu settings configuration file, but I can't tell for sure which one it is or I'd just edit that manually.

Please fix the menus or their editor so they both work together.

If you can tell me how to do this manually, that would suffice.

I've been very happy with Ubuntu and Xubuntu for almost four years now. This setback is extremely disappointing (in Xubuntu 12.04, all of these features worked perfectly).

mar@marbase:~ $ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS
Release: 14.04

mar@marbase:~ $ apt-cache policy menulibre
menulibre:
  Installed: 2.0.4-1~ubuntu14.04.1
  Candidate: 2.0.4-1~ubuntu14.04.1
  Version table:
 *** 2.0.4-1~ubuntu14.04.1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.0.3-1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/universe amd64 Packages

I expect to be able to edit the system menus and have the edits appear in the menus afterward.

My edits do not appear and other changes occur unexpectedly (like the Other menu disappearing).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: menulibre 2.0.4-1~ubuntu14.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-34.60-generic 3.13.11.4
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-34-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.3
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Wed Aug 27 23:52:08 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-08-23 (4 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 14.04.1 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140723)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: menulibre
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Eduardo Rudas (eduardorudas)]

Hi Sean! I confirmed this on Xubuntu 14.04 x64, fresh install, all updates and latest Menulibre 2.0.6 from the stable ppa repository.

Playing arround with the configuration files I found a workarroud for this bug:

Note: Update all packages and install latest Menulibre from ppa stable repository f

1. Delete all files in "~/<user>/.config/menus" (or rename the directory to ~/<user>/.config/menus.bkp and create a new empty "~/<user>/.config/menus" in order to backup it).

2. Delete all files in "~/<user>/.local/share/applications/" (againg, it's possible to rename "~/<user>/.local/share/applications" to "~/<user>/.local/share/applications.bkp" and create an empty "~/<user>/.local/share/applications/" in order to backup it)

3. Copy all files from "/usr/share/applications/" to "~/<user>/.local/share/applications/"

3. Backup "/etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/menus/xfce-applications.menu" (i. e. rename it to "/etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/menus/xfce-applications.menu.bkp"). You need to be root to do that. At this point, your Application menu will show all the optiosn that were not hidden but were not shown before.

4. Copy (and replace) "/etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu" to "/etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/menus/" You need to be root to do that.

5. Restart the system

Now is working as expected.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[autumna (autumna)]

just to here to confirm that the problem is still ongoing on 16.04 Ubuntu Studio
Steps to create the issue:
1) go to menu editor
2) change a menu item, for example: changing "lmms", to "lmms -s 48000"
3) save the menu
4) go to the menu, observe that Graphics and Video folders have vanished. Audio has only "lmms" entry

additional observations:

renaming ~/.config/menus/xfce-applications.menu to ~/.config/menus/xfce-applications.menu.bck results in other menus restored. However now there is 2 "Audio" folders. one with single application, the other with all expected applications.

removing
~/.config/menus/xfce-applications.menu.bck
~/.config/menus/applications-merged/user-ubuntustudio-audioproduction.menu
~/.config/menus/gnome-applications-merged/user-ubuntustudio-audioproduction.menu
reverts the menu back to correct structure.

.desktop file of lmms seems to be correctly created/modified throughout this process.

[rue (ruenoak)]

Hi thought I would just add this affects me as well using Menulibre.
I was able to successfully edit the menu by installing Alacate menu editor, it seems to work fine without breaking the main menu.

[Managor (managor)]

Alright. On a fresh install there appears to that only ~/.config/menus/applications-merged, ~/.local/share/applications/ and ~/home/managor/.local/share/desktop-directories/ exists. The symlink gnome-applications-merged and xfce-applications.menu don't even appear until you start editing the menu. If your problem is with wine programs, there exists only one file per program in ~/.config/menus/applications-merged/.

Autumna wrote pretty much the same as I did.