after the updates of Thu Nov 22 all the mate menus stopped working.
for example from the mate menu firefox doesnt start. terminal doesnt start. etc etc.
nothing starts from the menus. same is true for right click menus. same for the alt-f2 dialog. nothing runs. ive no idea where to even start troubleshooting this

Are you running -current or -14.2? If you're running -current have you installed the recent "new" packages? There have been a few packages additions and removals in -current that can have wide spread impacts. When using slackpkg a good habit is to run the following 3 commands instead of just "upgrade-all":

Watch out if you use the "clean-system" command. It needs additional modifications to /etc/slackpkg/blacklist to prevent listing 3rd party packages for removal (e.g. SlackBuilds.org, Alien's SlackBuilds).

Let us know if that helps.

im running current. after slackpkg install-new slackpkg upgrade-all slackpkg clean-system
the problem persists. btw its only mate. xfce for example is fine.

I don't run Mate but I noticed after a quick search here in the forum that dconf is mentioned numerous times. dconf was recently upgraded in -current. The dconf upgrade may have nothing to do with your issue so you should wait until someone else who runs Mate joins in the thread. A couple suggestions until then is try rebuilding Mate or try sleuthing with ldd on missing program libraries to find more clues.

thanks for the reply. already rebuilt mate twice on 2 diff boxes.
ill keep diggin around

Did you try rebuilding mate and its dependencies after the update? Assuming that doesn't do it I suppose the next step is to try reverting updates in the changelog until the culprit is found...

Edit: Actually you said you rebuilt it already.

orbea yea i think thats my only option at this point

actually how can i? all the mirrors will be overwritten with the new packages eh?

I had a similar issue with xfce right around the same time. It turned out that I had polkit blacklisted for some unknown reason and slackpkg didn't pick up the new polkit update. Not sure if it applies to you, but worth checking.

There exists a way. Look here
http://slackmirror.cbpf.br/pub/slackware/

Hi Wigums,

Can you specify which MATE version are you using?
I have everything working fine here on all my current machines running MATE and also under VM.

mate 1.20

did you make any changes to the default configuration?

i did not. just ran their scripts is all

can you try to make a new user and see if it affect new user as well?

Did you rebuild all mate packages? The -current update of Nov 22 gave me a bit of trouble, although not as bad as yours: the clock disappeared from the panel and the desktop was slow to load after reboot and a bit slow in response. I rebuilt the mate-panel package and then everything ran as usual.