No Applications in pull-down menu

Support & Help Requests
#1

There are no applications in the top left pull-down Applications menu (leftmost, between the red swirl- hook and Places System). Nothing appears there even if I uninstall/install applications. This happened when I upgraded from 16.04 to 16.10

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#2

I wonder if the configuration for your applications menu was destroyed, presuming the menu is completely blank. I encountered a bug a few months ago when I had a game with a ™ (special character).

Check this file: ~/.config/menus/mate-applications.menu by opening your home folder, then pressing CTRL+L and going to .config/menus/. If you open mate-applications.menu and find it’s blank, that’s the reason. Try renaming one of the undo entries if that’s the case.

To reload the MATE Panel, press ALT+F2 then type:

mate-panel --replace
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#3

mate-applications.menu is definitely blank. I don’t know where to find an undo entry to rename though, because the undo button is grayed out. .

#4

By undo entries, there may be files in that folder like this:

  • mate-applications.menu.undo-1
  • mate-applications.menu.undo-2
  • mate-applications.menu.undo-3
  • mate-applications.menu.undo-4

It could be possible there isn’t any, as those get generated when using the Main Menu editor tool as backup.

You can reset all the menus with the Main Menu tool (System → Look And Feel) and clicking “Revert”, that’ll reset your applications menu entirely.

#5

“Main Menu” is broken; clicking it produces a spinning wheel which disappears after a minute without having produced anything. It looks like something deep in my configuration is missing.

#6

Try running it from the terminal. This will give some error details:

mozo

(Mozo is the name for the Main Menu application)

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#7

** (mozo:7845): WARNING **: Error loading menu layout from “/home/jt/.config/menus/mate-applications.menu”: Error on line 1 char 1: Document must begin with an element (e.g. )
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/bin/mozo”, line 36, in
main()
File “/usr/bin/mozo”, line 32, in main
app = MainWindow(datadir, version, sys.argv)
File “/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Mozo/MainWindow.py”, line 56, in init
self.editor = MenuEditor()
File “/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Mozo/MenuEditor.py”, line 38, in init
self.__loadMenus()
File “/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Mozo/MenuEditor.py”, line 53, in __loadMenus
self.applications.dom = xml.dom.minidom.parseString(util.getUserMenuXml(self.applications.tree))
File “/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Mozo/util.py”, line 127, in getUserMenuXml
name = tree.root.get_menu_id()
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘get_menu_id’

#8

Looks like it’s crashing since it cannot read the mate-applications.menu file. This would make a good bug report for Mozo.

Please deleting that file (or the whole .config/menus folder), and try running Mozo again. Once you’re in, click “Revert” and the applications menu should reload.

2 Likes
#9

Deleting .config/menus did it! Thank you so much!

1 Like
#10

Hi there

As I have the same issue thought I’d resurrect this old thread

Unfortunately the suggestions don’t work for me. The mate applications menu file is not empty.

There is no “revert” option and look & feel>main menu won’t open now.

I have compiz enabled and have been messing about with the panels.

I’ve attached my output from mozo below.

Many thanks in advance. Really enjoying my first impressions of this distro.
Rick

mozo

(mozo:9676): Gtk-WARNING **: 22:43:52.025: Theme parsing error: gtk-widgets.css:3108:13: 'max-width' is not a valid property name

(mozo:9676): Gtk-WARNING **: 22:43:52.026: Theme parsing error: gtk-widgets.css:3109:14: 'max-height' is not a valid property name

(mozo:9676): Gtk-WARNING **: 22:43:52.217: Theme directory 22/panel of theme Numix has no size field


(mozo:9676): Gtk-WARNING **: 22:43:52.220: Theme directory 22@2x/panel of theme Numix has no size field


(mozo:9676): Gtk-WARNING **: 22:43:52.224: Theme directory 24/panel of theme Numix has no size field


(mozo:9676): Gtk-WARNING **: 22:43:52.228: Theme directory 24@2x/panel of theme Numix has no size field


** (mozo:9676): WARNING **: 22:43:52.358: Error loading menu layout from "/home/rick/.config/menus/mate-applications.menu": Line 96 character 1: Element <Old> is required to contain text and was empty

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/mozo", line 36, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/bin/mozo", line 33, in main
    app.run()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Mozo/MainWindow.py", line 82, in run
    self.loadMenus()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Mozo/MainWindow.py", line 227, in loadMenus
    self.loadMenu(iters, menu)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Mozo/MainWindow.py", line 242, in loadMenu
    iters[depth] = self.menu_store.append(None, (icon, cgi.escape(parent.get_name()), parent))
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get_name'
#11

It seems your mate-applications.menu file contains invalid data or is missing something, so it cannot be parsed nor opened for editing.

You’ll have to open up the Pluma text editor and go to this line to see what’s the anomaly in your file:

Line 96 character 1: Element <Old> is required to contain text and was empty

Not sure which version you’re using, but I suspect it should be possible to “reset” by deleting the .config/menus folder or this file to regenerate a new copy.

1 Like
#12

Thanks mate

I’m using 18.10, fresh install, all was good until I tried the menu editor…

I’d already deleted the .config/menus folder, which didn’t resolve the issue

Took a while but just figured out I need to use sudo caja to find the mate-applications.menu and be allowed to delete it…

Unfortunately this did not work.

If I end up needing to reinstall I can, but it’s good to learn from your mess up if you can!!

Before posting I also tried to reinstall the mate menu apps, but I may not have picked the right ones etc

Any other suggestions appreciated.

Thx again for helping
Rick

#13

This works, but next I have to learn why I have to keep the terminal open to keep the panel. The command doesn't return me to a prompt.

#14

It's because the parent process is the Terminal, so if you close that, the child mate-panel will close too. You can disassociate the process by pressing CTRL + Z and then typing:

bg
disown

This is known as Job Control in Bash, you can learn more here: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Job-Control-Basics.html

1 Like