After upgrade from 13.10 to 14.04 existing desktop launchers no longer work

[Aere Greenway]

I had a java web-start (icedtea-netx) application installed and working on Lubuntu 14.04 beta-test release.

It worked fine in that system. The application created a desktop launcher for launching it, and the desktop launcher worked.

When I installed updates to bring it to the current Lubuntu 14.04 release version, the desktop launcher for the application no longer worked. Also, the icon that used to be on the desktop launcher was changed to something generic.

I encountered the same problem when I upgraded a Lubuntu 13.10 system to 14.04.

But when I re-installed the application, the newly-created desktop launcher worked, and it had the proper icon.

The problem appears to be that the path to the icedtea cache has changed, and the launcher referenced that cache, both for the JNLP-file, and the icon.

When I modified the existing desktop launcher to use the new path, it launched successfully.

So my summary of the problem is:

After applying updates to icedtea-netx, desktop launchers of installed Java Web-Start applications failed to work, and their icons were changed to something generic.

My expectations were that the desktop launchers for installed Java Web-Start applications would continue to work after installing updates (or upgrading from Lubuntu 13.10 to 14.04).

The work-around is to re-install the applications. Another work-around (not suitable for ordinary users) is to edit the text properties of the desktop launchers to use the new path to the icedtea cache.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: icedtea-netx 1.5-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-24.46-generic 3.13.9
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-24-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: i386
CurrentDesktop: LXDE
Date: Tue Apr 29 11:48:42 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-04-08 (21 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Lubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Daily i386 (20140407)
SourcePackage: icedtea-web
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Aere Greenway (aere)]

The work-around of re-installing the Java Web-Start (icedtea-netx) application only works if you also delete the existing desktop launchers. If you don't, it won't re-create the desktop launcher, which is actually all that needs to be done.