Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "ubuntulooks"

[Jota1234]

I installed gtk+-2.10, glib-2.12, cairo-1.4, and gtk-engines-2.10 today, and now every gtk based application I open gives the following error:

Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "ubuntulooks"

In addition, it seems as though there are issues with rendering .svg files in applications, which makes some apps look a little off and makes a few unusable.

I assume the two problems are related.

The ubuntulooks shared libraries are installed and are in the directory /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.4.0/engines/

I tried reinstalling the gtk2-engines-ubuntulooks (version 0.9), but no help.

Any ideas?

[Jota1234]

I guess I answered half of my own question. The following site was useful in solving the error message, especially the part about the GTK_PATH environment variable and the search procedure for theme engines.

http://www.gtk.org/api/2.6/gtk/gtk-running.html

GTK+ based programs still don't seem to want to render .svg files, which was apparantly the bigger issue. Some programs have a fallback that displays other items (causing an altered appearance), and in other programs, they are just invisible.

Anyone else encountered this one before, or any ideas about fixing it?

[Jota1234]

Long story short, typical newbie errors. I had some libraries in the wrong places and apparantly some broken dependencies (although I never really pinned down which one exactly was the problem).

I re-installed a bunch of the dependencies and their latest versions. Here's what worked for me (installed in this order):

librsvg-2.18
tiff-3.8
cairo-1.4
pango-1.16
glib-2.12
gtk-engines-2.10
gtk+-2.10

That fixed the .svg problem.

The error message was resolved by moving the ubuntulooks shared libraries to the right place as described at

http://www.gtk.org/api/2.6/gtk/gtk-running.html

[peterdk]

Thanks, had the same issue, and moved the ubuntulook files to /usr/local/***
Now it finally works :)

[junglism]

wow, thanks for this solution peterdk, worked a treat!

[Mike.lifeguard]

Thanks, had the same issue, and moved the ubuntulook files to /usr/local/***
Now it finally works :)

How do you find those files? I don't know where to look in order to move them.

[andrewmcdonough]

I also got this error, but it happened when I upgraded from 8.10 to 9.04. I fixed it by updating the package gtk2-engines-ubuntulooks:

sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-ubuntulooks

---
Andrew McDonough (http://www.andrewmcdonough.com)

[Tapas Bose, India]

I also got this problem.

solution : sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-ubuntulooks

[ticket]

Installing

gtk2-engines-ubuntulooks

on Jaunty 9.04 automatically removed these packages:

human-theme
ubuntu-artwork
ubuntu-desktop

Is that going to cause problems in the future?
(e.g. the 'official' human-theme has now disappeared).

Please can someone advise!