Hi,
All of a sudden I find that today, all the entries from the Applications menu in Gnome Main Menu of my Ubuntu 8.04 system have vanished. Though, Places and System menus are intact.
If I click on "Main Menu" item in the System -> Preferences Menu, nothing happens.
How do I get back the menu items?
Thanking in advance,

I'm just guessing, but maybe this will provide a clue:

1) Press Alt+F2 to open the Run Application dialog
2) enter gnome-terminal (or the name of another terminal emulator if you know any)
3) in the terminal that opens, type alacarte (this is what happens when you click 'Main Menu' in the System->Preferences menu, but since you're running it from a terminal you should be able to see any error messages it produces)

Here's the output of alacarte -


/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/apt/progress.py: inconsistent use of tabs and s paces in indentation
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/alacarte", line 36, in <module>
main()
File "/usr/bin/alacarte", line 32, in main
app = MainWindow(datadir, version, sys.argv)
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Alacarte/MainWindow.py", line 49, in __ init__
self.editor = MenuEditor()
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Alacarte/MenuEditor.py", line 36, in __ init__
self.__loadMenus()
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Alacarte/MenuEditor.py", line 46, in __ loadMenus
self.applications.dom = xml.dom.minidom.parse(self.applications.path)
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/xml/dom/minidom.py", line 1915, in parse
return expatbuilder.parse(file)
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/xml/dom/expatbuilder.py", line 924, in parse
result = builder.parseFile(fp)
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/xml/dom/expatbuilder.py", line 211, in parseFile
parser.Parse("", True)
xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError: no element found: line 1, column 0

I have the same issue with eebuntu which is a version of hardy running on my eeepc701. I have been trying to figure this out for a while with no success. I think there must be some corruption in the menu files however I can't find them no rdo I know what to try and reinstall to rebuild the gnome system help! please


eee4me

Hey I found a solution to this, please check it up at my blog - here

The applications.menu file has to be deleted.