Unity does not find any applications

[creiss]

Hey all!

Thanks for your support this far.
I have tried the --reset flag, the screen flickers a little - with no effect. Even after relog (or reboot) - still can't find any programs, it does find Documents & Stuff tho.

Like I said I doubt reinstalling would fix the issue, as a newly created user (or the guest user) can find programs pretty fast.

I need Ubuntu for Work, and launching everything through an open terminal is not really user friendly. I desperatly need the find programs "feature".

Must be a user setting. Is it possible to deactivate the search for programs? Maybe I hit some key-combination somewhere? Disabled a needed user-daemon? Startup application?

I am out of my wits here...

[Krytarik]

a newly created user (or the guest user) can find programs pretty fast.

Ok, this (indirectly) answers my first question, if "unity-lens-applications" is installed, and also rules out any general, system-wide issue. (I just noticed that you've mentioned that before already.)

But you didn't answer my second question: is the Applications Lens present in your (own) Dash? Is its underlying daemon running?:

ps ax |grep unity-applications-daemon

If not, do you get any related error messages when you run it manually?:

/usr/lib/unity-lens-applications/unity-applications-daemon

[creiss]

Hey there,

Thanks for your continuous effort to help me, so much appreciated.
The daemon was not running under my username. Launching it directly resulted in no output, but still was unable to find any programs, even after some waiting.

I also tried restarting zeitgeist after starting the applications-daemon, still nogo.

I think we/you are on the right track here

-Chris.

[creiss]

One thing i just noticed: If i open the Dashboard and click on "More Apps", "Media Apps" or "Internet Apps" I do get a blank page.

[Steeperton]

I get this occasionally, and I've no idea what's causing it.

What seems to work is to not start any applications, etc. after booting, and waiting for about a minute after your desktop appears before doing anything. The application lens seems to work fine then.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than I can work out why!

[Krytarik]

The daemon was not running under my username. Launching it directly resulted in no output, but still was unable to find any programs, even after some waiting.

Try restarting Unity after that:

unity --replace

Btw., you still didn't answer if the Applications Lens is present in your Dash.

[creiss]

I just found out one more shred of clue:

When I am logged in I am missing the application icon in the bottom. Like the house (home), the Pen & Pencil (Application), the Document (Documents) and the Note (Music). I am missing the very pen & pencil icon. I guess thats why I cant find any programs.

Now, how do i retrain the dashboard to use the Application "plugin" again?

-Christian.

[creiss]

SOLVED

After setting up a VM of my notebook so I could easily revert all changes and after an hour of deleting every single file in my home folder I while continuously restarting the machine I have found the culprit:

~/.cache/software-center

After deleting this directory and relogging everything worked - even the software center. As to why this caused the problem I can only guess.

Thanks for all your help - may this solution help someone else.

-Christian

[Krytarik]

As to why this caused the problem I can only guess.

Yeah, that didn't seem too obvious to me either, in the first moment, but thinking about it, the Applications Lens also shows the "Apps Available for Download", and now it's started to make more sense, good to know! This is yet another reason why those 'feature' shouldn't be enabled in the first place.

(Btw., it's planned to provide the user an option to disable that, starting with Ubuntu's next version, Precise 12.04; even though, as of now, the freed up space wouldn't be used by the "Installed" apps instead.)