Beached Dolphin

[Don B. Cilly]

Notes:
1) I'm posting this in 18.04 even though I have the problem on Neon Unstable, because I believe it's much the same and there is no "software support" area there. Move if appropriate.
2) I already mentioned it in the Laboratory, but that is no place to ask for support, so
I believe it merits its own thread.

I was playing around with service menus.
I made a "touch" action, and I made it with MimeType=all/all;
Because I figured, one might want to touch anything.

Now, at some point I realised my Dolphin was "beached". Not broken, it mainly works, but...
If I right-click on an empty space, I don't get any menus, like "Create New", "Paste one file", etc. It does nothing.
I have to go through the File and Edit menus in the bar to do it.
If I right-click on an a file or directory, I do get them. Which is wrong, though. And it sometimes gets the wrong results.

So I thought, hmm, maybe that MimeType=all/all; is a bad-eyed deer.
So I changed it to MimeType=text/plain;inode/directory; .
Which should be good enough.
No luck. My Dolphin is still "beached".
I tried removing (move somewhere else the service menu. Nope.
I tried removing all of them. No good.

Now, maybe it wasn't the service menu at all, and it got beached for another reason, but...
I spent more than half an hour googling, and -as you can imagine - no luck there either.
I tried
- restoring /usr/bin/dolphin and ~/.config/dolphinrc from backup.
- inspecting mime types, but not actually changing anything - nothing looked useful.
- purging and reinstalling dolphin with Muon. (also removes konqueror, reinstalled that too).
- spending a lot more time googling.
- apt autoremove and full-upgrade.

My dolphin is still beached.
Now, before doing a full restore from backup - it's about a week old because I postponed it because, yeah, well...
... if anybody has seen this before or has any idea... apparently nobody who's been seen by google bots has...

[jglen490]

After purging and re-installing, is the "touch" action still evident in the service menu?

[Don B. Cilly]

All the service menus have been removed (to a secure location

[claydoh]

After removing the custom action have you logged off since then, or run kbuildsycoca5? See the man page for the latter. if you have not logged out, maybe running it with the --noincremental switch *might* help.

Try using it as a different user and see if this exhibits the same thing, assuming that you only installed the service menu for a single user. If it does, then it well could be a temporary breakage of some sort due to running pre-release, untested, raw, meant-to-bne-buggy software.


This definitely does not belong in an 18.04 section. We are not overly picky about being on-topic, but this goes a bit further than what would go in a Bionic forum.

Even Neon's section may be out of scope, perhaps as this has zero to do with any distro, so the KDE support subforum seems appropriate, so i'll move it there.

[Don B. Cilly]

I have logged out quite a few times. Rebooted, in fact.
I ran kbuildsycoca5 with and without the switch. No change.
I used it as a different user (root). No change.

Still. It may be nothing to do with the service menus, and, as you point out, more with "pre-release, untested, raw, meant-to-be-buggy software." This is Neon unstable after all.

In /var/cache/apt/archives/, I have (among other dolphin releases):
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1515516 Sep 3 03:33 /var/cache/apt/archives/dolphin_4%3a19.08.0+p18.04+git20190903.0100-0_amd64.deb
Which probably means it was updated yesterday.

Two upsides to it:
1) I can stop delaying the backup - one thing and the other, it was getting a bit silly.
2) I am learning Krusader, and it is... awesome

[EDIT] I might add:
1) I'll make a separate backup, actually. Got plenty of space, and you never know
2) Confusing coincidences seem to be more common with software (especially unstable one, yes than IRL.
3) If it turns out to be true (and it probably will) it wasn't my service menus' fault
4) Thanks

[Don B. Cilly]

Sure enough, after today's update, everything is back to normal and the dolphin is swimming freely.
And sure enough, I put the service menus back in their place, and it seems that they were not the problem.
Just one of those coincidences.

In the meantime, I got used to Krusader, which is to Dolphin like an E-type Jag is to a TR7 - it's even got a built-in user action editor - so I probably won't be using Dolphin much now.

[vinnywright]

In the meantime, I got used to Krusader, which is to Dolphin like an E-type Jag is to a TR7 - it's even got a built-in user action editor - so I probably won't be using Dolphin much now.

yes Krusader is nice , and installs with a separate "root mode" launcher (that works) as well .

VINNY

[TWPonKubuntu]

@Vinny, thanks for pointing me to the root mode launcher in Krusader. The Dolphin devs don't appear to be motivated to restore this functionality to Dolphin so I've replaced it with Krusader in my website design workflow.
Thanks.

For those also looking for this:

Tools->Start Root Mode Krusader

or from Krusader: Alt+Shift+K

[Don B. Cilly]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]8277[/ATTACH]

[vinnywright]

@Vinny, thanks for pointing me to the root mode launcher in Krusader. The Dolphin devs don't appear to be motivated to restore this functionality to Dolphin so I've replaced it with Krusader in my website design workflow.
Thanks.

For those also looking for this:

Tools->Start Root Mode Krusader

or from Krusader: Alt+Shift+K

yes their is that as well .

when I installed mine (Krusader) their was 2 menu entry's 1 in "utilities" Krusader , 1 in "system" Krusader-(root mode) .

the menu entry's are the same except on the "advanced tab" in the menu editor for the root mode Krusader the "run as different user is checked and root is selected.

VINNY