Disappearing desktop icons

[mla]

I have two main desktop machines running Mageia 4. After today's update one of them now always has the same problem I have seen very occasionally on both machines: after KDE login none of the desktop icons are shown. If I change "Folder Settings" (right click on desktop background) to "Default Desktop", click "Apply", then change back to "Folder" and click apply again, desktop icons re-appear, but irritatingly not as I'd grouped them, but sorted alphabetically in columns on the left hand side of the screen. Though they are de fact grid-aligned, grid alignement is off and has to be switched on manually.

Considering that m .kde4 directory is fairly ancient, I moved it out of the way (KDE logout, console login, mv .kde4 x.kde4, logout, KDE login) letting KDE construct a new one, then adjusted the desktop I like it (vertical panel on the right, icons grouped by their function). No good. Every time I log out and login, I get a blank desktop -- no icons. This smells of a pure software issue to me. Can't see how hardware differences might be relevant. KDE simply loses the desktop information for some reason.

Does not happen on the other machine, though both are running the same Mageia version, fully patched.

Has anybody else seen anything like this? Any ideas what the cause might be?

[doktor5000]

I have two main desktop machines running Mageia 4. After today's update one of them now always has the same problem I have seen very occasionally on both machines: after KDE login none of the desktop icons are shown. If I change "Folder Settings" (right click on desktop background) to "Default Desktop", click "Apply", then change back to "Folder" and click apply again, desktop icons re-appear, but irritatingly not as I'd grouped them, but sorted alphabetically in columns on the left hand side of the screen. Though they are de fact grid-aligned, grid alignement is off and has to be switched on manually.
[...]
Has anybody else seen anything like this? Any ideas what the cause might be?

Yes, exactly the same. And no, sadly not.


Although at my parents laptop, it doesn't happen for every logout/login or for every reboot, but still pretty often.

[doktor5000]

desktop icons re-appear, but irritatingly not as I'd grouped them, but sorted alphabetically in columns on the left hand side of the screen. Though they are de fact grid-aligned, grid alignement is off and has to be switched on manually.

I've also seen the icon sorting and aligning issue, read up on https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=227157 for that. Still exists, can be partly workarounded by explicitly selecting "unsorted" in icon layout options for the desktop.

[mla]

Um... "Unsorted" in icon layout options? Where's that? The folder view options show nothing of the kind. Nor can I see anything of the sort in Systems Settings. So, OK, I am probably being blind.. humour me!

[doktor5000]

Right-click on desktop => settings for folder view => Icons => Sort by: Unsorted.

[mla]

Now that is *very* interesting -- and no, I was not being blind! On the machine on which I don't see the problem, the icon sortin options are indeed Unsorted, Name, Size Type, Date (and Unsorted is already selected). But on the machine which has the problem, the Unsorted option is simlpy missing and the selected option is Name. What the hack is going on???

[doktor5000]

If you right-click on the desktop => Icons => Sort by - is something chosen there?

[mla]

On the machine without the problem nothing is selected. On the machine with the problem, Name is selected and there is no way to de-select it.

[doktor5000]

On the machine with the problem, you may want to try with a new user. If the issue doesn't occur there, you probably need to create a new ~/.kde4 configuration.
Log out, rename ~/.kde4 e.g. to ~/.kde4-orig and then login again - configuration will be default, but you can gradually merge back configs from your old configuration.

[mla]

As I said in my original post in this thread, I've already done that.

[mla]

Have played with a brand new account and with deleting my own .kde4. Getting some complex results. I am about to go off-line until tomorrow, will try to summarise then. In the meantime, just one point... Having re-initialised my .kde4 and having done nothing to customise it, I don't lose desktop icons on every logout/login, but there is still no "Unsorted" option for desktop icons.

[mla]

Well, I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning experimenting and still have no clear idea what the heck is going on. Problems are reproducible, but unreliably (except for one cosmetic one). Apparently exactly the same sequence of operations may or may not give exactly the same result. Here's a summary of some of my observations...

1. It may be relevant that on the machine with the problem I have a secondary screen plugged in. I simply don't have the time to repeat all my experiments again with it removed. At least a couple of observed issues, while apparently in no way connected with disappearing icons, are however to do with the second screen

1a. Create a brand new accout. Log into it. The second screen is active, showing a blank panel at the bottom. Without doing anything, switch to a console session and back again. Sometimes (seen twice) this results in both primary and secondary screens being black, showing just the mouse cursor. The cursor is active and the keyboard can be used to switch to a console session, but the KDE session does not respond in other way. Have to use a console root session to kill it.

1b. Having logged into a brand new account, get rid of the welcome window and open System Settings. That windows opend on the secondary screen (why?; NB if welcome window is not closed first, System Settings window was seen to open on the primary screen). De-activate second screen and click Apply. Both screens go blank, then the primary one comes back with the System Settings now on it. That System Setting window mostly (but not always!) demands that you click on Apply again.

2. Here's one thoroughly reproducible problem (which may or may not be connected with the initial presence of the second screen). Having de-activated the second screen, unlock widgets and move the panel to the right screen edge. Logout. Login again. In addition to your panel on the right, there is now a blank panel at the bottom.

3. After that things get vague.

3a. E.g. before moving the panel to the right, I repositioned the default icons and aligned them to the grid. On one occasion (and that occasion only!), moving the panel afterwards, caused the icons to be sorted by name and positioned on the left of the screen. However, the Unsorted option was still present on the icon sorted menu.

3b. Changing the background image of the folder view sometimes (but not always!) the background image is shared between Folder View and Default Desktop, so that changing it for one, changes it for the other. Once this happens it continues happening. But start from a brand new account and it is not the case.

3c. On one occasion (but on only!) it was apparently changing stuff on the panel (removing launchers and adding icons) that caused the disappearing icons syndrome.

This is a mess! In the meantime, I somehow achieved stable icons on my own account. Hence I give up. I have neither time nor energy to try disentangling this any further. If I have a spare hour or two in a nearish future, I'll try to see what difference unplugging the second screen does. But overall my conclusion is that there is something very unstable in KDE4 in this area.

[doktor5000]

but there is still no "Unsorted" option for desktop icons.

Yep, reproduced here on my parents laptop that has the issue with the disappearing desktop icons.

Also did some investigation, which involved changing the working ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma* to immutable (chattr +i) - turned out this is a bad idea,
and KDE doesn't like that at all. It didn't start properly, didn't shutdown properly anymore.

Did fetch some backups today of the files in questions, and removed one unused activity.
Will have to compare against a pristine ~/.kde4 account, but didn't have the nerves today - will check and let you know,
but probably not before next weekend.

[daniewicz]

Full patched 64 bit Mageia 4 with KDE. I also have the occasionally disappearing desktop icon problem and no "Unsorted" option for desktop icons.

[jiml8]

The desktop that I normally use has the icons in a plasmoid, rather than on the deskop directly. It is the plasmoid that allows you to view the contents of a directory, and I set it to the ~/Desktop directory.

I do have an activity that has desktop icons on it, and from time to time I do use that desktop, though I must say I have decided I like the plasmoid desktop better.

But, I never see icons vanishing from the plasmoid.

So, what I am wondering about is this. When the icons are missing from the desktop, what happens if you switch to another activity that has the icons in a plasmoid? And then, what happens when you switch back?

I don't know what your problem is, but I am wondering if doing this will in any way affect the problem.

[jiml8]

For that matter, perhaps you have an activity that is defined to not have desktop icons showing, and also not defined for any other mechanism to show icons? Just a thought, but if you are somehow getting that activity instead of the activity that has your desktop icons set, this might be your problem.

[mla]

I know I did not mention it, but the very first thing I did try when my icons started disappearing regularly on every login, was to get rid of all activities, leaving just Desktop. Didn't help.

Having said that, my impression is that the problem was on those lines, just not to do with activities. As noted in a post above, the background image sometimes gets shared between Folder and Default Desktop. When that happens, if the system spontaneously flips one from Folder to Default Desktop (but in such a way that the menu still thinks you are in Folder), the result would be exactly as I'd experienced it. Icons gone, switching to Default Desktop has no apparent effect, switching to Folder re-sorts the icons.

All my machines are behaving themselves at the moment, so being unable to reproduce the problem, all I can offer is that "impression".

Mike.

[doktor5000]

For a comparison, what value do you have for sortColum in ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc ?

This is what I have, with folderview. In folderview settings > icons it shows this as "Unsorted", and on this machine is has never reordered my icons.

Code: Select all

┌─[doktor5000@Mageia5]─[18:57:36]─[~]
└──╼ grep -i sortcolumn ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc
sortColumn=-1

[daniewicz]

Code: Select all

sortColumn=0

[daniewicz]

I have edited ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc and changed my sortColumn value to -1. I now have an unsorted option which I have selected. After one reboot, the desktop icons were not lost!. I will report back in a few days.

[doktor5000]

Code: Select all

sortColumn=0

Yes, but without the actual setting that you can see in folderview settings -> icons -> sort by
this value alone is pretty meaningless - so please specify both

[daniewicz]

[daniewicz]

After several logouts and reboots I continue to have sporadic (not consistent) loss of desktop icons.

[mla]

Do icons come back when you switch folder settings to Default Desktop and back to Folder? If they do. do they come back as they were, or re-sorted? Also, when you switch between Default Desktop and Folder, does the desktop background change? If not, is it because you explicitly set it to be the same in both cases?

Sorry for all these questions, but being no longer able to reproduce the problem, I have no way to experiment.

[daniewicz]

For me switching between Default Desktop and back to Folder never did restore my icons. I did the following which always works:

System Settings
Workspace Behavior
Workspace
Workspace Type
switch from Desktop to Netbook and back again