I just downloaded the latest series of updates for Debian Unstable/Experimental. And my gnome installation seemingly has erased all of the file associations. So when I double-click a .jpg file, I get a message saying gnome can't open it instead of image viewer. Ogg and mp3 files get the same message instead of amarok opening.

And my desktop launchers have reverted back to text documents with '.desktop' suffixes in the file titles.

Has anyone else had this happen or heard of this type of problem?

Kernel: 2.6.27-1-amd64
Gnome version: 2.22.3
Linux version 2.6.27-1-amd64 (Debian 2.6.27-1~experimental.1~snapshot.12516) (gcc version 4.1.3 20080623 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.2-23+1)) #1 SMP Sun Dec 21 02:53:13 UTC 2008

libbonobo was messed up yesterday it appears to be fixed today.There were quite a few gnome packages that were to be removed yesterday because of that.

Okay. So if I update via Synaptic today, do you think my Gnome desktop will once again recognize my desktop launchers and file associations?

You might try reinstalling gnome-mime-data. Gnome and sid do not really play nice especially right after a freeze. The 2.24 parts are starting to make their way into sid so be careful and keep an eye on what is being installed and removed.

Exciting time to be a Sid user. Hold on and enjoy the ride, or, if you're nervous, wait a few weeks before any more upgrades... there are going to be a lot of them with the freeze over!

Might want to install apt-listbugs as well if you are running sid.. Then browse the list of bugs before doing un update to see what is broken. There are times i put off doing an update in sid for a week or so waiting for abug to be fixed because I don't like the sound of tte bug report and what it breaks..

I've never tried updating sid with Synaptic, so used to aptitude from the command line
could anyone tell me offhand if synaptic shows the output from apt-listbugs ??

Yes synaptic will show the output of apt-listbugs.

Dumb question - how do you make Synaptic show the output from apt-listbugs?

Install apt--listbugs then in synaptic Setting>Preferences> Apply changes in a terminal window.

i update using aptitude safe-upgrade without any loss in gnome....but this is at the console level and not at the gui

I re-installed gnome-mime-data and nothing happened. Do you think I need to do something with gnome-vfs? That's just a silly guess, but I'll take what I can get.

I am just at loss as how I might fix this.

you might just need to sit tight for a few days and update again to get the fix..

Did you check the current sid bug reports to see if there is a bug in gnome-mime-data that could be causing the issue ?