Hi, I have a problem with the menu in KDE. I have Mandrake 2005 LE. I know that there's other thread on that subject but none of them solved my problem.

Here it is: I see a lot of items in menudrake that I don't in the actual menu ! Also, I tried adding a new program and a new folder in menudrake but the changes never appeared in the actual menu. I saved my changes, everything went ok, I even tried restarting the computer but the new folder/application never appeared.

Why is there a difference between what I see in menudrake and what I see in the actual menu ?

i stil haven't completely figured out the menu system myself. i know that the system wide one is held in /var/xlg-menu. if you are using kmenuedit, go into menudrake, select menu options, and then select the KDE/GNOME menu. i imagine that the kmenuedit entries are somwhere in your hom directory rather than being system wide.
i still think its a bit overly complex. i still haven't found a way to completly eliminate such menu items as xkill, xconsole, xrefresh, etc.

I tried the command "update-menus -v" but the kde menu still doesn't contain all the items that I see in menudrake. Is there another way to change/edit the menu in mandrake other than menudrake because this doesn't seem to work very well (or it's me who's doing something wrong) ?

Thanks, any help is appreciated.

joe2280
you could try to find a way of editting them successfully in the /var/lib/menu-xdg and in /etc for sysme wide menus. for menus in your own directory, try using the search facility to look for clues. other than, i don't know. i'm not mega-experienced with linux and i'm still a relative n00b, so don't take my answer as final for gawds sake

Probably because menudrake is reading from and writting on the wrong configuration file. There is a option to write changes to the "system menu" or to the "user menu" one of the two should work.

If they don't I would recomend editing the menu configuration file by hand. I don't know where it is on gnome or kde. I recently did it on IceWM and the file was on /usr/X11RC/lib/x11/icewm/menu

It was pretty easy to understand the file structure.

You may want search KDE documentation on the internet to find out where the menu configuration file is.

Personally I find that menudrake takes too long to flush the modifications or load, so I would rather alter stuff by hand

The Mandrake menu system builds the menu from the files in /usr/lib/menu. If you want to manually add an item simply create a file in there, see the other entries for the format - its fairly straightforward.

Ok, I've read the freedesktop.org spec about the menus and sudently, everything was much clearer... BUT ... I need your help to understant one more thing:

I've deleted all the menu related files in my home directory then I rebuilded the menus with "update-menus -v": cool ! the menus were all back to what they were supposed to be. Then I went in menudrake, pressed save and exit.
-> All the icons of the sub-directories in my menu went back to the "default" blue folder (like the on you see in konqueror when you browse your files) and the user-specific menu files were back in my home folder.

What's up with that ? Why when there's no menu related files in my home folder, the icons are ok, but after I have saved with menudrake, all the icon are the same blue folder ?

Thanks.

I think the menu editor in this release of Mandriva just has some major bugs. That's all there is to it. Personally, after installing any program, the icon won't show up in my menu (even though the rpm package adds a menu entry that you can see in the menu editor). The icon won't show up until I go in to the menu editor and hit the save button. Completely different bug, but that's why I think there is just something weird with the program overall. It just has too many different issues for too many different people.

When editing the menu, you need to make sure that you select to edit the system menu. You also need to make sure that you select "All" as the menu environment to edit if you are using the default Mandrake menu and have not changed it to show the KDE menu.

I think I've found out how to add menu entries by hand.

Look at your environment variables for XDG_CONFIG_DIRS. In that directory you'll find a directory structure that describes the menu structure. If you find the correct directory, you can just copy over a .desktop file like you were expecting. No restarting of the desktop manager necessary.

Using the gui menu editor copies things to a local directory, ~/.something (I've forgotten now) and that takes precedence over $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS.

Please let me know if I'm wrong on this. It took a while to figure it out.

This is correct - all the menu files will be in /var/lib/menu-xdg, which is what XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is set to on Mandriva. However you can't edit the menus in those directories - the /var/lib/menu-xdg structure is built from the files in /usr/lib/menu on Mandrake/Mandriva. I just tried it then - I added a new .desktop file into my menu in /var/lib/menu-xdg and then ran update-menus, the update-menus script rebuilds the /var/lib/menu-xdg directories and my new .desktop file is lost.

The correct way to edit the menus manually in Mandrake is to create or edit files in /usr/lib/menu or the equivalent in the user's home dir (sorry not sure what it is) if its for the user-specific menu. You then run the command 'update-menus' as root.

So my answer is partially correct and mostly wrong.

You can make a temporary change by just plopping a .desktop file into XDG_CONFIG_DIRS and the change will be seen immediately.

However, if someone correctly runs update-menus as root, this change will disappear.

Thanks for the clarification.

Thanks a lot for your help guys. I'll try that. Any of you had experienced the "icon problem" ? (all icons of folders and sub-folders go back to the default "blue folder icon" after a save in menudrake - except for "More applications" who remains the gear with a plus sign).

It's not that important (it's just icons) - it's just that i'd like to understant what's going on.

Thank you.

I don't know if this is the proper thread for this question, but if I were to write an application and wanted it to be added to all user's menus, how would I do that?

When a user runs menudrake, it makes a local menu structure so it looks like I'd have to get every user to run menudrake to make sure it was in their local menu structure.

You don't have to do anything like that. Have a look at any RPM packaged for Mandrake, you'll see that in the spec file the packager creates the necessary /usr/lib/menu file and runs update-menus.