On an Arch-based Linux installation (CachyOS) with KDE Plasma 6.5, while running a Proton VPN client (not sure if it had anything to do with the problem, but I was connected while this happened - at first I thought it might be something encryption-related, but I cannot tell with certainty), I changed the panel position a few times - bottom to sides, then back to bottom; this caused the Application Launcher to be resized. I was able to restore it to normal by switching to Application Menu and then back, but then the browserâs icon disappeared from the panel, the placeholder returned an âUnknown application folderâ message when clicked; also, a few games installed through Lutris and Wine Installer had their shortcuts gone from the Launcher, although desktop shortcuts were in place and functioning. It seems the whole ~/.local/share/applications folder was wiped, especially if this is where Lutris places the Launcher shortcuts for the games it installs.
Thus, if anyone could suggest
What happened
Why it happened, and
What to do to prevent it from re-occurring,
I would be indebted.
Should any further information be necessary, please let me know, and thanks.
What do these commands do, exactly, is there a chance they might wipe something more?
Also, I havenât tried creating a new user, might give it a try, but - since this was (so far, at least) a one-off thing, what would be the chances of it re-occurring under one?
A new USER is the acid test to prove itâs your fault (at least, your data and not the system).
Snapshots and regular incremental backups are your safety net⌠I generally have a weekly, a couple of daily, and a couple of hourly snapshots via back-in-time on my HDD.
Unless you can figure it out from the log, then the general fix might be to rename your ~/.config and see how that goes, then continue from there (moving things back until you get the issue back).
kbuildsycoca will simply rebuild your menu, it does not change anything, but it might wash out any corrupted data from the cache.
you can usually learn more about any command by typing --help after it.
the menu can easily get corrupted by actions you take in the editor which can sometimes cause it to crash ⌠usually dragging items across multiple categories will do it, so i just use cut/paste instead.
I donât imagine users like the terms âyour faultâ. I find âA new user is a good troubleshooting method to determine if it is a configuration issue local to your user accountâ to be far less confronting
Running kbuildsycoca6 doesnât seem to change anything I can see, indeed, I had already carried out the LauncherâMenuâLauncher switching and sort of restored the folder entries.
I do have Snapper installed, and have snapshots, but what I am mainly trying to do is sort out what happened and why to avoid it re-occurring, as noted in the first post.
Moving the panel around one more time still resizes the the App Launcher, although this time the ~/.local/share/applications folder seems untouched. Could something I did in the editor delete its contents?
Also, would there be any logs I could look at/post here, and if so, where would they be?
Well, no - I wanted to see what happens in the same environment if I repeat the steps.
Ok - say that I create a new user, what do I do with it? Drag the panel around again to see if it does the same? It shouldnât be a problem to do so, come to think of itâŚ
Well, maybe it is not certain, but I suppose it wouldnât hurt to lookâŚ
Snapshots I do make, and even went back to one after the missing entries, but the problem persisted.
I do wonder if it could be something I did with the editor, I am not 100% certain if I used it while I was trying to resize the launcher.
