menu editor won't accept changes

[Jane Silber]

Binary package hint: alacarte

After upgrade to Feisty Beta, the menu editor won't accept changes. Clicking on menu item to add it to the menu shows a checkmark in the box momentarily, but then it automatically disappears, without taking any effect.

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

Please run from terminal and check for any errors.

[Jane Silber (silbs)]

Ran from a terminal: same results (i.e., doesn't work) and no error message of any sort.

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

Alright, can you tar up ~/.local/share/applications and ~/.config/menus so I can see what it was trying to do?

[Jane Silber (silbs)]

Attached.

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

Were you by any chance trying to enable "New Login in a Nested Window"? If so, this has a TryExec line so you have to have xnest installed for it to enable. I should probably pop up a notice for this.

[Waldemar Osuch (osuchw)]

I have tried unsuccessfully to show Synaptic in Administration menu but had the same problem as Jane.
I have ended up adding a new menu item.

[Jane Silber (silbs)]

Travis -

Re earlier comment, I wasn't enabling New Login in Nested Window - I was trying to add Add/Remove programs which had disappeared. This turned out to be because of bug #96694, the root cause of which was because I was in the adm group but not the admin group. This was caused by the fact that my initial install on this machine was version 4.10 (warty) which relied on the adm group. Since then I have only done upgrades, not new installs, so I was never part of the admin group (which was added around Dapper-ish timeframe).

At any rate, I have added myself to admin, and now Alacarte works fine. I wonder if the behaviour I was seeing was due to inadequate permissions. If that's the case, then a warning message from Alacarte ("your user doesn't have permission....") would probably be advisable.

[Philip Paquette (pcpaquette)]

Confirming. To reproduce log in as any user which is NOT in the "admin" group, then open alacarte and try to enable any options in System->Administration, the checkbox will remain checked for 0.5 seconds then will be unchecked without any messages...

[Philip Paquette (pcpaquette)]

Enable the following options in System-> Administration

* Gnome Partition Editor
* Language Support
* Login Window
* Network
* Restricted Drivers Manager
* Services
* Shared Folders
* Software Sources
* Synaptic Package Manager
* Time and Date
* Users and Groups

The ~/.config/menus files seems to include the .desktop files, but something must block those files from appearing in the actual menu.

[Philip Paquette (pcpaquette)]

This bug seems to be occuring because of the

"X-KDE-SubstituteUID=true"

line in the ~/.local/share/applications/*.desktop files. By removing that line manually in each of the items listed above, I was able to make them appear in the menu ...

[rannsaicher (rannsaicher)]

Hey Guys
Ive upgraded to Feisty from Dapper this week (21 September)and i am getting this behaviour (slect main menu option in system/preferences, tick the box to add a menu (say debian) , close the window and nothing changes ) but my userid is in the admin group.

mcpheat@farbhalach:/etc$ groups
mcpheat adm dialout cdrom floppy audio dip video plugdev lpadmin scanner admin fuse
i have alacarte 0.11.3-0ubuntu2

[Ridgeland (rambutan1)]

I'm getting this error in 7.10 Beta
It is not consistent.
I can add items like Applications -> Accessories -> File Browser
and it works. The menu shows it.
But I cannot add Applications -> System Tools.
Not as root, as system admin, as terminal running "sudo alacarte".
It seems to allow executable items to be added but not submenus.
I tried to create a new submenu and it refuses that to.

[Ridgeland (rambutan1)]

This error is in 7.10 final as well.
See this forum post
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=604877
My work-around was editing out a <NOT> line in
/etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu
This a bug in the logic of nesting files for local and global controls.
Alacarte is Broken as it currently is released.
Upgrades may not see this error, New installs will.

[Ridgeland (rambutan1)]

Confirming the error is still there in 7.10 final release
The error also occurs for users that ARE in the "admin" group.

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

I don't see a bug in any of these reports.

[Ridgeland (rambutan1)]

OK I've learned it's not a bug but a feature!
You cannot add a menu so you can turn on the items under the menu without first turning on at least one of the items under the menu. Or in my specific case to turn on the System Tools menu I must first turn on an item in that menu (i.e. Root Terminal). Then System Tools menu turns itself on. I expected to add the menu then turn on items in the menu. This fails big time. I don't like this feature but now I understand it.

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

I wouldn't say feature, I'd say unfortunate side-effect of the way the menu system works.