[lde4.1}Desk top missing

[Leonard Chatagnier]

 Leonard Chatagnier
lenc5570 at sbcglobal.net



----- Original Message ----
> From: Bart Silverstrim <bsilver at chrononomicon.com>
> To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 9:17:25 PM
> Subject: Re: Desk top missing
> 
> 
> 
> Leonard Chatagnier wrote:
> 
> >> Once you own them you can copy or move to them to
> >> other locations in 
> >> newuser's folder structure, like ~/Desktop, and they
> >> should reappear.
> >>
> > Thanks, this just about clears up any issues/Questions
> > I had for the new users home dir.
> 
> As long as they're normal files, they should reappear when copied into 
> the directory (and have proper permissions). You should be able to 
> compare by creating a document on your desktop and then opening a 
> terminal and doing a "cd Desktop", then "ls -alh" and comparing what the 
>   file(s) are and their permissions.
> 
> Some "special items" will not be there, like drives. This is controlled 
> by magic elves...that is to say, I don't understand the mechanism that 
> makes my USB drives appear on my desktop. I think it's controlled by 
> Nautilus on my system, so items on the desktop (on my system) are a mix 
> of that directory's contents and Nautilus's whims.
> 
> >>>  OTOH, is there anything I can do to also
> >>> fix the old home to get the desktop back?  
> >> Depends on what happened to it. Was it corrupted
> >> from a crash? You may 
> >> not be able to in that case. Or it may be something
> >> so fubarred that you 
> >> may be able to fix it, but the time invested will
> >> frustrate you to the 
> >> point of pulling hair out before this other "fix"
> >> would work.
> >>
> > OK, understand this. It did occurr from a power
> > failure so I'd better keep both homes available until
> > I'm sure I want the new user home. IMWOT, if the files
> > are still on the OS in $HOME/Desktop I should be able
> > to restore  them to the GUI Desktop.  But I don't know
> > that nor do I know what KDE file controls it. Maybe if
> > I did, I could fix it myself and maybe not.
> 
> NoOp (Where are you, anyway?!? Usually you've chimed in by now...) was 
> just mentioning on another thread about a fix where you can rename some 
> .config files to restore defaults. He may know more about it than I do, 
> but like I said when I started...this is how I'd probably end up trying 
> to fix what happened to you. I don't know if I fully trust the directory 
> with corruption by replacing a girder at a time instead of putting in a 
> new bridge, so to speak.
> 
Renaming .config, .gnome2, .gnome2_private and .kde4 didn't help at all.  Sure thought it would until I tried it.

> >> No problem. We all run into issues at times, and
> >> when it's our primary 
> >> system it can be especially nerve wracking. You're
> >> lucky that it's still 
> >> usable if there is filesystem corruption or
> >> goofiness in it...like I 
> >> said, you may want to still look up doing an FSCK at
> >> boot time. There's 
> >> a file you can create (using "sudo touch") in the
> >> root directory to tell 
> >> Ubuntu to perform a repair at boot time, if you're
> >> interested. You might 
> >> find it in the Man pages. *DO NOT RUN FSCK TO REPAIR
> >> A RUNNING FILESYSTEM*.
> >>
> > Thanks for this tip also.  A good idea. I'll RTFM. I
> > am aware of the warning above as I once did it that
> > way in my early Debian experience which caused me to
> > reinstall. I'm going to e2fsck first right after
> > reading the manual and hopefully don;t have to go any
> > further. But if not successful will do the new user
> > routine.  Thanks for all the detail.  It's much
> > appreciated.
> 
> A google for something like "ubuntu fsck boot touch" should show a page 
> that gives the step for creating the particular file to do a boottime 
> fsck; I just don't remember it off the top of my head. Someone else 
> might point it out. It's just a quick one-liner then reboot. The only 
> disclaimer is that any filesystem repair may make the system consistent 
> by completely wiping the problem off the drive, which means one moment 
> your files are there and the next they're not. I've not had this really 
> happen to me, but I know it's a possibility, so I'd be remiss if I 
> didn't also remind you of that...try to get a backup *first* then play 
> with repairs.
> 
> If you can't find the command to boot-check, let the list know and get 
> my attention and I'll try looking it up for you.
> 
I did all you suggested, Bart, and correctly I think, but still no joy.
I copied my orig home folder to the new home oldhome folder. It didn't 
copy everything like hidden files but did get the Desktop using:
cp -r /home/lchata /home/lenc/oldhome
Looked and the old home Desktop.  It still had all the original Desktop
entries  in it so I copied it to the new home Desktop and restarted X.
The new Desktop GUI after everything loaded was still empty.
I also first did an e2fsck -cckv /dev/sda8 giving a no bad block report
and followed by e3fsck -p /dev/sda8 which said it was clean.

I also took a look at Desktoperr.txt in my original home folder which had 
a lot of entries.  I wont show the whole list but some look suspicious are:

X Error: BadAccess (attempt to access private resource denied) 10
  Major opcode: 2 (X_ChangeWindowAttributes)
  Resource id:  0x4400006
QObject: Do not delete object, 'unnamed', during its event handler!
QObject: Do not delete object, 'unnamed', during its event handler!
X Error: BadAccess (attempt to access private resource denied) 10
  Major opcode: 2 (X_ChangeWindowAttributes)
  Resource id:  0x4400006
X Error: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter) 3
  Major opcode:  20
  Minor opcode:  0
  Resource id:  0x1825a09

Of course, if anyone want to see the entire file I'd be glad to post it.
Thanks for trying.  I appreciate your detailed effort and I know how hard
 it is to write a detailed procedure as you did.