I have a Debian Wheezy Xfce which was upgraded from Squeeze.
After upgrade, I am unable to start Synaptic from menu.
Purging and re-installing does not help.
Running gksu synaptic works fine.
The problem is in running from the menu.

Any advice?
Thanks!

You have to change the menu properties/command it is probably missing the gksu and so synaptic is not coming up as requested.

Right on top of the button in the panel, click with the right click, it should bring up the Applications Menu dialog box, then click in the button Edit Menu, another dialog box will show up, there you have to find where synaptic is, select it and in the left side click in the button properties to edit the command that bring synaptic up, try first synaptic-pkexec, if that doesn't work then try gksu synaptic.

Regards

I do not have "Edit Menu" option.
There are only

• Properties
• Move
• Remove
• Panel (with submenu)

/etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu

You will have to dig through the bugger to find Synaptic.

If you use Synaptic regularly you could put it in a launcher on your panel. I have my Root Terminal, Terminal, Gparted and Synaptic on one launcher.

I use the command;
I use panel launchers for all regularly used applications. Hadn't even tried Synaptic from the menu. Been running this install (Sid) for a long time. Looks like I need to mess with the menu too. Doesn't launch from there for me either.

I wouldn't worry to much about pkexec. You can find to file that is not authenticating your Synaptic session correctly at;
/usr/share/polkit-1/actions/com.ubuntu.pkexec.synaptic.policy

The only use for this that I have found is you can edit that file and replace the "auth_admin" to "yes" and you can have no security on Synaptic at all. I did try this on one of my "throw away" installs. Works. You can basically set up that file so that you log in as normal user and have all the root privileges you want with no password.

This should come as no surprise. Note the file title "com.ubuntu.pkexec.synaptic.policy". Ubuntu is really in favor of easily ellevating privileges. Very convenient. No fooling around with silly things like passwords.

Being a grumpy geezer it gives me the creeps. Used it on that install, and with that edit it worked great. Scared hell out of me. Something else is installed there now.

Without that edit I have never had any luck with loading anything that uses it. I either don't need them or they are in a launcher using gksu.

I don't know why it doesn't work. Maybe it is looking for you by way of sudo or something. Haven't ever set up a Debian install to use sudo. I will have to ask around. Think I know a feller that uses sudo, (set up at installation by not giving a root password when asked for one) and maybe it works for him.

Oh I'm sorry i missed the Properties part. then just follow the rest, it isn't that hard to figure it out, it is all there.

Regards

Then there's no Edit Menu button in the Properties. There are some checkboxes, a button to select the icon and a selection of a menu file.

It shows the menu structure, but no actual items.

Is that the Applications Menu dialog box ?
If yes, under the Menu File section do you have 2 options as radio buttons? Like:

• use the default menu
• use custom menu file

If so, then the use the default menu should be selected. Is it greyed out?

Regards

Yes, the default menu is selected, but how can I edit it?

Ok so no edit button there then the access to it is from the settings manager, the menu edition is probably there.
What i got here is Xfce 4.8 running under Xubuntu VM and it is obviously slightly different.

See the Settings Manager then go to Panel then to the tab Items,
maybe it is there or somewhere in the Settings Manager for sure.

Regards

I have used Synaptic, and it is a nice program, but, when it breaks that can be a pain. I therefore avoid GUI package managers like the plague. I prefer using a root shell prompt to install applications, security updates.

# aptitude install nameofprogram.

The command for synaptic in main menu properties for gnome is "synaptic-pkexec" , not sure if it's thesame in XFCE.

I was wondering if Wheezy, which runs Xfce 4.8 might be different. I do have such a button on my preferences for the main menu. Works very nicely.

Can also open it from the Settings Manager>Panel by highlighting the Main Menu and using the "edit the currently selected item" button.

I use the menu very rarely. This is very interesting though. Will have to explore it more. Seems to work well.

Have Synaptic and Gparted opening from the menu. Panel launcher is a lot quicker and easier for me to use but it is nice to have things working.

I believe the tool to edit the menu is called alacarte and isn't installed by default for XFCE but id for Gnome -- so if you don't have gnome installed you would need to install it manually.

If I try to install alacarte in my Xfce installation, it takes a damn good part of GNOME with it.


---------- Post added 19-01-14 at 21:31 ----------

Unfortunately, neither right-click on the menu button, nor Settings Manager path gives an option to edit menu items.