Icons disappear on Desktop

[TH]

This is not a problem right now, but I would like some input on how to help locating the bug when the problem re-appears (it has happened twice in about two weeks now...).

I'm running Ubuntu Jaunty x64 with ext3 file system.

When adding files/folders to the Desktop by copying, moving or creating new, sometimes the files/folders disappear. This also happens when trying to do the same in nautilus in the Desktop-folder (not in any other folder).

Old files/folders remain visible, while the new files/folders disappears both from the Desktop and in the Desktop-folder using nautilus. When running ls-command in terminal the files/folders shows as expected. If I run "mv old new", the files/folders will appear on the Desktop again.

I have no idea what causes this problem. I noticed it one time in Intrepid, and now two times in Jaunty. The only common thing I remember is probably that the computer hadn't been rebooted in about a week. A system reboot fixes the problem, but I'm not sure if the files/folders automatically appears after reboot, as I every time "recovered" the files/folders by using the mv-command before I rebooted.

It seems to me that the computer enters some kind of state where new files disappears from the Desktop. Only a reboot will get the computer out of this state. The terminal works as expected though.

Any idea why this happens?

[Apteryx (maxco)]

I am also experiencing this bug. It seems to happen while I'm moving files or folder on desktop. Everything that is on my desktop then disappears (files, folders, whatver) to show only the wallpaper. The mouse right click also doesn't work after this. Everything else continue to work fine, and if I restart my session, the icons and files will be back.

As reported in the above post, one can see the files in a shell. Maybe the process that handle the display of the objects on the desktop crashes and could be restarted. Any idea what process it could be?

I don't see errors in the Xorg log or dmesg | tail command.

My presentiment would point toward some bugs in compiz... bug I have no proof of that.

[Apteryx (maxco)]

The process which is crashing is "nautilus".
One can restart it with Alt-F2 then type "nautilus".

Could someone point me to some log files where I could see a trace of the crash?

Thank you!

[hxm (mafaldas777-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

I encounter the same problem. When i go to Locations>Computer all the icons from the desktop disappear and the right click is disabled .
The icons reappear when i run "nautilus" on terminal and i get this:

** (nautilus:6476): WARNING **: Unable to add monitor: Δεν υποστηρίζεται (translation: Not supported)
Nautilus-Share-Message: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: 'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare: cannot open usershare directory /var/lib/samba/usershares. Error No such file or directory
Please ask your system administrator to enable user sharing.

(nautilus:6476): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: g_file_info_get_name: assertion `G_IS_FILE_INFO (info)' failed

** (nautilus:6476): WARNING **: Got GFileInfo with NULL name in computer:///, ignoring. This shouldn't happen unless the gvfs backend is broken.

sys:1: Warning: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

Because of that, I installed samba package but the problem insists.

Now when i execute nautilus it replies only the first line (of course the icons reappear...)

** (nautilus:7372): WARNING **: Unable to add monitor: Δεν υποστηρίζεται (translation: Not supported)

I found this reference, in which A.Walton comments "This is not a bug, it's Nautilus letting us know that GVFS isn't complete yet, and that some GVFS mounts will never support monitoring. We could probably make it warn less, but it's really not an issue."
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/223782

Any ideas ?

[Abhijit Navale (abhi-navale)]

I am unable to open 'Computer'.
It is located in Places => Computer.
When this happens I cannot right click on the desktop.
But I can open other places such as Home, Documents.
Though the "Computer" accidently opens then there is nothing inside it i.e. no icons etc.
Also if I try to open it by clicking, then other places which are already opened automatically gets closed e.g. Documents etc.
The first time this happend when I conneced Kingston microsd card reader.

Is is VIRUS?
OR
Is this just mulfunctioning?
Please guide me to solve this.
I also have posted in forums here : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1394214

[Abhijit Navale (abhi-navale)]

Also when this problems occurs, then if I try to rename microsd card then the rename option (and some other options) are disabled

[Abhijit Navale (abhi-navale)]

I am using Ubuntu for more than 2 months But i dont get this error before.
I started to get this error after installing various themes, windows borders, icons etc. using software called 'Art Manager'

[Abhijit Navale (abhi-navale)]

as suggested by gdonwallace on ubuntu forums,

when i run gksudo nautilus it asked me root password and then i get root file browser and i terminal i got these erros:
administrator@abhi-laptop:~$ gksudo nautilus

--- Hash table keys for warning below:
--> file:///root

(nautilus:13347): Eel-WARNING **: "nautilus-metafile.c: metafiles" hash table still has 1 element at quit time (keys above)
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
(nautilus:13347): Eel-WARNING **: "nautilus-directory.c: directories" hash table still has 1 element at quit time

[Nicolas Raymond (nicoray)]

I got the same problem in Karmic : icons disappear from the desktop, and right click is not active, even if everything is fine when I log in.
It may have happened when I changed the theme from Human to DarkRoom. I returned to Human, let's see if it changes something.
I confirm that starting nautilus make the icons come back.

Here is an abstract of my /var/log/messages:

Feb 2 20:26:19 nicolas-laptop kernel: [ 5560.813678] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 950209 4096-byte logical blocks: (3.89 GB/3.62 GiB)
Feb 2 20:26:19 nicolas-laptop kernel: [ 5560.814996] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
Feb 2 20:28:17 nicolas-laptop pulseaudio[2701]: ratelimit.c: 151 events suppressed
Feb 2 20:31:53 nicolas-laptop kernel: [ 5895.523043] sdb: detected capacity change from 3892056064 to 0
Feb 2 20:31:55 nicolas-laptop kernel: [ 5896.653925] __ratelimit: 6 callbacks suppressed
Feb 2 20:31:55 nicolas-laptop kernel: [ 5896.653938] nautilus[2822]: segfault at cfd ip 008a7868 sp bf9c04d0 error 4 in libglib-2.0.so.0.2200.3[871000+b5000]
Feb 2 20:32:01 nicolas-laptop kernel: [ 5903.027905] usb 1-2: USB disconnect, address 6

I suspect that the line "nautilus" is linked to that. And the problem may be linked to connection/disconnection of my Ipod nano.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, your crash report is either missing or challenging to deal with as a '.crash' file. Please follow these instructions to have apport report a new bug about your crash that can be dealt with by the automatic retracer.

 If you are running the Ubuntu Stable Release you might need to enable apport in /etc/default/apport and restart.

 If you are using Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop environment - launch nautilus and navigate to your /var/crash directory and double click on the crash report you wish to submit.

 If you are using Kubuntu or Xubuntu you can file the crash using /usr/share/apport/apport-qt --crash-file=/var/crash/_my_crash_report.crash in a terminal - where _my_crash_report.crash is the crash you would like to report.
 I'm closing this bug report since the process outlined above will automatically open a new bug report which can then dealt with more efficiently. Thanks in advance for your cooperation and understanding.