Nautilus loses history

[Nils Kassube]

rikona wrote:
> Wednesday, November 2, 2016, 11:01:59 PM, Nils wrote:
> > rikona wrote:
> >> Wednesday, November 2, 2016, 8:00:56 AM, Nils wrote:
> > I would suggest to uninstall kubuntu-desktop. Then run the command
> > sudo apt-get autoremove
> > which should uninstall all the packages which were not installed
> > before. However that may not be the end of the story because it only
> > clears the system from the possibly infringing package. There may be
> > additional config files now in your $HOME/.config or $HOME/.local
> > folders which cause the problem, but I can't tell you which file it
> > is.
> 
> I did the above, but it did not stop any of the problems I still see.
> It didn't uninstall some KDE apps I had installed earlier, but it did
> foul them up in multiple ways. BEFORE the desktop install, the KDE
> apps were reasonably well behaved in Unity - now they're a mess. The
> big problems are with the Ubuntu desktop. The kubuntu desktop install
> REALLY messed it up!
> 
> AFTER doing the uninstall, I have a few NEW problems I didn't see
> before - example - when I try to log on to another box via the LAN,
> kwallet asks for my password, which I never gave to it, [and, kwallet
> doesn't exist according to apt]. SO, without the password/wallet, I
> can't log in to the other box!

Hmm, that looks quite bad. How do you login to the other box - via ssh? 
Anyway, if kwallet asks for a password, it must be there. Either it is 
in the package kwalletmanager or in kde-runtime. If it is the latter, it 
is probably a dependency of every KDE application.

> I was checking re config files, and there seems to be hundreds of them
> spread out all over the place. Some are probably associated with the
> earlier KDE installs, but may have been modified by the desktop
> install [like now asking for the wallet].
> 
> It's not clear how, or even if, this can be fixed. Is the best
> approach to just do an Ubuntu reinstall from scratch?
> 
> If I do a reinstall WITHOUT doing a full format, will it see that I am
> installing the same thing and keep the existing config files that may
> be causing the problems?

The problematic config files are stored in your $HOME and they wouldn't 
be touched if you reinstall without formatting. So that's not really 
helpful. Another option would be to reinstall kubuntu-desktop and live 
with the nautilus issue. At least the other issues introduced by 
uninstalling kubuntu-desktop should be reversed. Or uninstall the other 
KDE applications you had installed manually.

> I do have a recent backup of home, but if I restore that will that
> just bring back the bad config files? One possibility that occurs to
> me is to take off all the hidden files from the recent backup, restore
> the rest of the data, and then place hidden files from an older
> backup done before the desktop install. This might give me much of
> what I had, with some work and history lost.

If you leave away the hidden files you might get a usable state. But 
some hidden files are probably useful to preserve, like ~/.bash* ~/.ssh 
~/.wine ~/.mozilla ~/.thunderbird (if they exist).

> Another thought is, since the Ubuntu desktop is messed up, might it be
> a good idea to reinstall THAT desktop and see if it might fix things?

Of course you could try this option, but again I'm rather sure the 
problem is caused by config files in your $HOME and they are never 
touched by installing / uninstalling packages.


Nils