Can't start tracker-preferences, "File is empty"

[Chris Lasher]

Binary package hint: tracker

My laptop experiences kernel panics from time to time which require a hard reboot and sometimes loss of data. After the last kernel panic, I have been unable to open tracker-preferences. I get the following error message:

$ tracker-preferences

** ERROR **: failed: g_key_file_load_from_file(): File is empty

aborting...
Aborted

What file is empty?

Description: Ubuntu 8.10
Release: 8.10

tracker:
  Installed: 0.6.6-1ubuntu5.1
  Candidate: 0.6.6-1ubuntu5.1
  Version table:
 *** 0.6.6-1ubuntu5.1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.6.6-1ubuntu5 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages

[Chris Lasher (chris.lasher)]

The file tracker-preferences was complaining about was ~/.config/tracker/tracker.cfg. This bug can be reproduced by creating an empty tracker.cfg file (i.e., move tracker.cfg to tracker.cfg.bak and do touch tracker.cfg). The error should give more information, or better yet, the file should be checked to see if it is empty, and if so, simply proceed as if the file didn't exist, and overwrite it when finished with the preferences dialog.