[kde-linux] Virtualbox start icon missing

[Mark Knecht]

Hi Kevin,
   Thanks for the speedy reply

On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Kevin Krammer <krammer at kde.org> wrote:
> Hi Mark.,
>

> In a KDE session you can easily retrieve the full list search paths for
> .desktop files using the following command:
>
> kde4-config --path xdgdata-apps
>
> If you son's system is missing the entry for Virtual Box then either did the
> .desktop file not get installed or not into one of the search locations, or if
> it is installed, the installation failed to trigger the update mechanism.
>

With your help I now see that my son's system has the same
virtualbox.desktop file that's on the other systems:

rocky ~ # cat /usr/share/applications/virtualbox.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Oracle xVM VirtualBox
Type=Application
Comment=Run several virtual systems on a single host computer
Exec=VirtualBox
TryExec=VirtualBox
Icon=virtualbox
Categories=System;Emulator;
rocky ~ #

As a layman it's not clear to me whether the
"Categories=System;Emulator;" say put this in System, or put it in
System->Emulator but it's not anywhere I can find so it appears that
the install 'failed to trigger the update mechanism'.

> In the latter case you can run that manually:
>
> kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental
>

Unfortunately when I attempt this it fails as it appears the document
it's trying to load is empty/corrupted

mark at rocky ~ $ kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental
kbuildsycoca4 running...
kbuildsycoca4(3126) VFolderMenu::loadDoc: Parse error in
"/home/mark/.config/menus/applications-merged/xdg-desktop-menu-dummy.menu"
, line  1 , col  1 :  "unexpected end of file"
kbuildsycoca4(3126) KConfigGroup::readXdgListEntry: List entry
text/html in "/home/mark/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list" is
not compliant with XDG standard (missing trailing semicolon).
mark at rocky ~ $ cat
/home/mark/.config/menus/applications-merged/xdg-desktop-menu-dummy.menu
mark at rocky ~ $

Now, as a second test I logged in as my son and looked in his menus.
The icon isn't there but in his account the kbuildsycoco4 command
didn't fail, but it also didn't appear to create the icon:

matt at rocky ~ $ kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental
kbuildsycoca4 running...
matt at rocky ~ $

To verify this is there a file in my account that holds the icon info
that I can look at? (Not edit, just look at.)

Anyway, it's still apparently not working.

Thanks,
Mark

> Cheers,
> Kevin
>
> [1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/
> [2] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/basedir-spec/
>
>>
>>    This is a whole area that's very mysterious to me about KDE vs
>> Windows. In Windows I can see properties of start icons by right
>> clicking. In KDE I don't know how to do this. On the machines that
>> have an icon in the menus I don't see how to tell what it's doing? I
>> know it's running Virtualbox in this case but how does one determine
>> what any general icon is doing? I've been reduced to watching for
>> changes in top to see what program is started. I'm sure that's not the
>> design goal here.
>>
>>    Anyway, I want to learn how to manage these icons KDE has in the
>> menus and would appreciate any pointers I can get, and thanks in
>> advance for letting me vent. KDE is great but this part of it has
>> frustrated me over and over again over the years.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Mark
>> ___________________________________________________
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> --
> Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
> KDE user support, developer mentoring
>
> ___________________________________________________
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