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Add files to "Files" menu

dgbird

Mon Jul 06, 2020 9:05:28 am

I am new to Zorin o/s.
I need to repair and add some files to the "Files Menu.
What is the best method?
Thanks

Aravisian

Mon Jul 06, 2020 9:06:45 am

dgbird wrote:I am new to Zorin o/s.
I need to repair and add some files to the "Files Menu.
What is the best method?
Thanks

Is this directly related to this thread?:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15921&p=72673#p72673

dgbird

Mon Jul 06, 2020 9:49:13 pm

As I said, I am new to Zorin {Linux].
I thought this forum is help and support.
If not, where do I find the correct thread?
Don

Swarfendor437

Mon Jul 06, 2020 10:31:33 pm

Do you mean you want subfolders? ;) :D

Aravisian

Mon Jul 06, 2020 11:39:47 pm

dgbird wrote:As I said, I am new to Zorin {Linux].
I thought this forum is help and support.
If not, where do I find the correct thread?
Don

Don, help and support can only be as helpful as the questions that you asked. You asked in the correct subforum, but your question is vague and it appears to be split into two threads.
In order to help you troubleshoot an issue, you must be willing to answer questions and detail what you see on your screen.

The thread in which you showed that you get an error in locating your home files seems Directly Related to this thread. However, the issue described in that thread COULD be caused by the accidental deletion of part of the Desktop Environment.
Simply adding the missing folder may not resolve that issue, if it is the case. You would need to re-install the desktop and that requires specific instructions. Clear answers require clear questions: I would not want to make a mistake or give you the wrong troubleshooting instructions.

Can you please clarify your questions to help us to help you? If I ask if this thread is related to the other thread, your answer can be provided with "Yes, it is related to that problem" or "No, it is a separate issue."

dgbird

Tue Jul 07, 2020 12:08:53 am

Thank you Aravisian
When I click on the files Icon, the problem is with the files that appear in the side bar.
"Documents Music Downloads and Videos" files, when selected , a pop up says "Unable to find requested file. Please check the spelling and try again"
I accidentally deleted the "Pictures" file.
I would like to restore these files.
I have not used them and they have no personal content.
Don

Swarfendor437

Tue Jul 07, 2020 3:48:30 pm

Aravisian

Tue Jul 07, 2020 8:19:50 pm

dgbird wrote:Thank you Aravisian
When I click on the files Icon, the problem is with the files that appear in the side bar.
"Documents Music Downloads and Videos" files, when selected , a pop up says "Unable to find requested file. Please check the spelling and try again"
I accidentally deleted the "Pictures" file.
I would like to restore these files.
I have not used them and they have no personal content.
Don

Don, accidental deletion of "Pictures" folder should not render the Documents, Downloads and Music folders as gone, as well. While you can create a new folder for Pictures, if it is not assigned as that folder, then it will not work in the Treeview (or sidebar) of your FIle Mananger without configuration. But more importantly, we want to figure out why all your personal directories in ~Home are not working properly or if something essential is missing.
Could you please open a terminal with ctrl+alt+t
Copy and past the following into it:
Code:
ls ~

That will list out all the folders and files in ~Home

Can you copy paste this into terminal next:
Code:
cat .config/user-dirs.dirs

That will show us what directories are assigned in ~Home

For both of the above terminal commands, could you please paste the results in this thread?

dgbird

Wed Jul 08, 2020 12:12:49 am

Here are the results
Don
don@don-Satellite-Pro-C850:~$ ls ~
'1 Song Book' 'donbird@********com sent' Photos
'9 instrumental' 'Don Song.awt' Pictures
Cartoons DOWNLOADS Songs
Desktop 'Local Folders' Wallpapers
DOCUMENTS MUSIC

don@don-Satellite-Pro-C850:~$ cat .config/user-dirs.dirs
# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run.
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/"
don@don-Satellite-Pro-C850:~$

Aravisian

Wed Jul 08, 2020 1:16:08 am

dgbird wrote:Here are the results
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/"


ok...
I know that often times, when users ask questions on forums, they may get an answer with a command, or get asked to paste something, but are offered no explanation of what any of that means.
I prefer to go another way... I think it is better to explain how it all works to give you understanding and control over your own system.
The command ls is to List (It stands for list) the contents of the specified directory. It will list all files within that specified directory. In your case, home directory which is shortened to "~". We can see that it is missing your Home Directories.
The command that you pasted for the configuration of "users-dirs" -User Directories. These are the Documents, Music, Public, Downloads... your personal directories or folders in HOME (~),
Looking at that- you can see that $HOME/Desktop is configured. The rest, however, are not. They should be and during installation of Zorin, it should have configured during the installation. You mentioned that they were- but no longer are, which tells us that something changed that configuration.
I suspect a terminal command like "sudo apt autoremove" was used or a Package Manager was used- Something was used to remove an Integrated Piece of Software that is integrated into your desktop environment- therefore to remove it, it removed your Desktop Environment configuration along with it. This shows that it is important to check carefulyl before removing software of what it will remove alongside of the software you opted to remove. You have a lot more control on Linux, but this also means you must stay on your toes. ;)
(SIDENOTE: This part in parentheses may not apply to you to solve THIS issue, but to answer your question, you can add folders or directories that will appear as assigned or Use Custom Icons within an icon theme that specifies specific icons for specific home directories using the users-dirs file. You can edit that file in whichever way you prefer to edit a file- to configure your user directories. For example, you see how Desktop is assigned, just follow that same format for Personal Directories you want assigned. On my computer, it includes several Personal Directories including one assigned as "$HOME/Games" and another assigned as "$HOME/Zorin" and so on. If you needed ONLY to replace your Pictures Directory, you would then edit your users-dirs.dirs file to include:
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures)
HOWEVER - In your case, I think you should first try to re-install the desktop environment.
Add the repository to have access to the files:
Code:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zorinos/stable

Next, update your sources list
Code:
sudo apt update

Now, install the desktop environment from Zorin:
Code:
sudo apt-get install zorin-desktop-session

Code:
sudo apt-get install zorin-desktop


IMPORTANT: Watch the terminal responses to your commands carefully. If you get a list of items to be installed and then it asks y/n, select y for yes and proceed. Once you have installed everything, reboot and test.

IF you get a response that says the Zorin Desktop is already the current version, then we need to try to figure out why your users-dirs file was changed some other way. So please let us know in this thread.

dgbird

Wed Jul 08, 2020 5:04:28 am

Thanks
Did that, No Change
Don

don@don-Satellite-Pro-C850:~$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zorinos/stable
[sudo] password for don:
[sudo] password for don:

More info: https://launchpad.net/~zorinos/+archive/ubuntu/stable
Press [ENTER] to continue or Ctrl-c to cancel adding it.
sudo apt update
Hit:1 http://ppa.launchpad.net/yannubuntu/boot-repair/ubuntu bionic InRelease
Get:2 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security InRelease [88.7 kB]
Hit:3 http://ppa.launchpad.net/zorinos/apps/ubuntu bionic InRelease
Hit:4 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic InRelease
Hit:5 https://packages.zorinos.com/stable bionic InRelease
Get:6 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates InRelease [88.7 kB]
Hit:7 https://packages.zorinos.com/patches bionic InRelease
Hit:8 http://ppa.launchpad.net/zorinos/drivers/ubuntu bionic InRelease
Hit:9 https://packages.zorinos.com/apps bionic InRelease
Hit:10 https://packages.zorinos.com/drivers bionic InRelease
Hit:11 http://ppa.launchpad.net/zorinos/patches/ubuntu bionic InRelease
Get:12 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-backports InRelease [74.6 kB]
Hit:13 http://ppa.launchpad.net/zorinos/stable/ubuntu bionic InRelease
Get:14 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [46.1 kB]
Get:15 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security/universe amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [49.2 kB]
Get:16 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security/multiverse amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [2,464 B]
Get:17 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main i386 Packages [712 kB]
Get:18 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 Packages [1,007 kB]
Get:19 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [295 kB]
Get:20 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 Packages [1,091 kB]
Get:21 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe i386 Packages [1,025 kB]
Get:22 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [279 kB]
Get:23 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/multiverse amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [2,468 B]
Get:24 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-backports/universe amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [7,972 B]
Fetched 4,768 kB in 11s (431 kB/s)
Reading package lists... 2%desktop-session
Reading package lists... Done
don@don-Satellite-Pro-C850:~$ sudo apt-get install zorin-desktop-session
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
zorin-desktop-session is already the newest version (3.1.8).
zorin-desktop-session set to manually installed.
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 12 not to upgrade.
don@don-Satellite-Pro-C850:~$ udo apt-get install zorin-desktop

Command 'udo' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install udo

don@don-Satellite-Pro-C850:~$

Aravisian

Wed Jul 08, 2020 5:19:03 am

dgbird wrote:zorin-desktop-session is already the newest version (3.1.8).
zorin-desktop-session set to manually installed.

Already set at newest version- Also, because of that, it automatically set your desktop environment to Manually Installed which means anytime you do an autoremove command in the future, the desktop environment will never be included in the removal (This is a good thing).
EDIT
The suggestion I made seems to not work in Zorin ( I am not sure why) - So I edited that suggestion out.

Instead, if we can assume that your desktop environment is intact, we are left with a bit of a mystery as to what happened to your directories.
Maybe a "rm -rf" command was used.
In the meantime, you MAY consider doing a wipe and reload: Reinstall Zorin completely, just to be safe.
Alternatively, if you prefer to avoid doing a reinstall of the OS, you can create the User Directories with the terminal command
Code:
mkdir Documents Downloads Music Pictures Videos

Then log out and log in, ensure that your users-dirs.dirs file reflects the changes as outlined in the posts above...

After that, use your system normally and watch for future errors or things missing.

dgbird

Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:30:02 pm

Success....
Documents-Music- and Videos have been restored but no Pictures.

Don

don@don-Satellite-Pro-C850:~$ mkdir Documents Downloads Music Pictures Videos
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘Pictures’: File exists

Aravisian

Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:42:09 pm

dgbird wrote:mkdir: cannot create directory ‘Pictures’: File exists

Do you currently have a Pictures folder?

dgbird

Wed Jul 08, 2020 10:29:21 pm

I deleted "Pictures"a file in home (not in the side bar) and ran the code again and it resulted in a "Pictures" file created in home (not in side bar) type Folder (inode/directory)
Don