install a .desktop file

[magowiz82]

Hi,
I created a script to reboot mine system in windows and I would like to add globally (for all users) a menu item that starts it , so I created win-reboot.desktop that contains :

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Win Reboot
Comment=Reboot into Windows
Exec=/usr/local/bin/win-reboot.sh
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/win.jpg
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Application;System;
StartupNotify=true
and I saved it in /usr/share/applications/ , anyway I don't see it in the menu, why?
Do I miss something?

[Brandon Williams]

First, double-check the permissions on the file. They should be 644 (i.e. rw-r--r--). Next, verify that other applications in the Application and System categories are showing up in your menu. If there aren't any with just those two categories that show up, then try adding another category to the list to see if the item shows up.

[gmargo]

You don't see it in the menu because the menu is generated from a cached idea of what the application directories contain. The actual cache file is /usr/share/applications/desktop.en_US.utf8.cache. The locale-based filename may differ for you.

To make a long story short, you can regenerate that cache file with this non-obvious command:


$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure python-gmenu
Run that whenever you install or modify the .desktop file.

To see what that command actually does, see the package's post-installation file: /var/lib/dpkg/info/python-gmenu.postinst. It amounts to a wrapper around the /usr/share/gnome-menus/update-gnome-menus-cache program.

[magowiz82]

Checking .desktop file permissions and running
sudo dpkg-reconfigure python-gmenu

fixed the issue for me.
Thank you