[DONE] MGA3, KDE4.10 Activities missing in Activity Explorer

[tleedavidson]

Hi Folks,

This is kind of a weird problem.

After a successfull upgrade to, and reboot into, Mageia 3, I was able to select the Activity that was, apparently, the default Activity containing the desktop config I used in Mageia 2. (I never really used Activites even though there were quite a few of them that got created, somehow ) Then, after a subsequent reboot, I lost all those Activities. And, each login gives me only one Activity, "New Activity", and a black (blank?) wallpaper even after creating more Activites and setting wallpapers as a test.

Activity Explorer with only New Activity

NewActivity.png (10.45 KiB) Viewed 2599 times

The weird thing is, right-clicking on a file (in Dolphin and Konqueror) and choosing "Activities..." from the context-sensitive menu brings up a list of 31 Activities that I can, supposedly, link the file to.

Activities to Link File To (list of 31 truncated)

LinkTo.png (12.19 KiB) Viewed 2599 times

A newly created user does not appear to suffer from this system confusion.

(As a side note: From ~/.kde4/share/config , I deleted plasmarc (since it hadn't been 'touched' in months) and moved plasma-desktop-appletsrc and plasma-desktoprc to a temp directory in an attempt to start fresh, but then I logged in to a desktop with no system Panel )

I think my best bet is to just start fresh again, and then add and re-configure a default Panel. But I decided to go ahead and post this because: 1) I am unsure if this is a bug that may need to be reported, 2) I hope it may help others finding a similar situation, and 3) I am hoping someone has a simple solution to how I can get the Activity Explorer to show all the Activities that at least some part of the system (Dolphin) is aware of.

Thank you.

T Lee

P.S. This issue existed with KDE 4.10.2 and persists after the latest update to 4.10.5 .

[doktor5000]

How do you start activity explorer?

[tleedavidson]

I start activity explorer either with the 'Super'-q key combination, or by clicking the "New Activity" cashew at the top right of the screen and then clicking "Activities".

[doktor5000]

You may need to ask in KDE forums about this ... http://forum.kde.org/

[tleedavidson]

Thank you for taking the time to respond, doktor5000.

This issue is not significant enough to me to prompt me to register with yet another forum. I'll just start fresh and recreate my Panel.

Thanks again,
T Lee

[doktor5000]

Please mark the thread accordingly by editing the topic of the first post and prefix it by [DONE], thanks

[tleedavidson]

For anyone else taking the same path as I have by removing the plasma* files in ~/.kde4/share/config to start fresh, and ending up with no desktop Panel, you might find that adding a Default Panel does not do as expected according to /var/lib/mageia/kde4-profiles/Default/share/apps/plasma/layout-templates/org.mageia.plasma-desktop.defaultPanel .

Aside from some of the application launchers not being added to the Panel, the Application Launcher icon was also not correctly configured. However, it is easy to change that icon by right-clicking the Application Launcher (undefined) icon and choosing "Application Launcher Menu Settings", then "Options". The Mageia icon for the Application Launcher can be found at: /var/lib/mageia/kde4-profiles/Default/share/icons/oxygen/scalable/places/mgabutton.svg .

I hope that helps.

T Lee

P.S. Perhaps the maxlength for topic text could be increased to allow more descriptive topics, and easier marking of same.

[doktor5000]

P.S. Perhaps the maxlength for topic text could be increased to allow more descriptive topics, and easier marking of same.

At least not changeable from ACP ...
Feel free to add it to this list: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Forums_todo_ ... r_Bugzilla

[tleedavidson]

Gosh, I'd be glad to add it to that list. But, when I click "Edit" for that section, I don't get a WYSIWYG editor; just the text code that somehow fills that table. I would rather not risk messing up the formatting of the page.

And just for future reference, I found a thread on the phpBB forum that contains instructions on how to implement the change:
How to increase length of Topic's Subject?

Don't know what version we're running here, but phpBB3 does not require any database changes.

Cheers,
T Lee

[tleedavidson]

Here's an update.

Removing ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma* was apparently not enough of a fresh start to fix this issue. I still had problems with my activities not being properly saved and restored, and with phantom activities showing up.

So, I registered with http://forum.kde.org and posted the issue there. I tried what they suggested, got no success, and reported back to the forum. At one point, one of their responses was, "Very odd."

I finally fixed the problem by, essentially, blowing away the .kde4 configurations and allowing the system to rebuild them upon login. I posted what I did and the successful results to the KDE Forum: http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67 ... 39#p293039

[bobw]

Activities in MGA4 occasionally disappear as well. The solution I have found is to delete the Activities widget from the panel and install a new one. That brings everything back.