I'm running kde 4.6.5 on Debian Wheezy amd64 with a 3.0-3.dmz.1-liquorix-amd64 kernel. Recently I have been unable to clear recent documents from KickOff's "Recently Used" menu. Clear Recent Applications works perfectly normally but Clear Recent Documents does not. Right clicking on a listed recent document brings up the menu with the Clear Recent Document item but clicking on it has not effect. Likewise using the System Cleaner Sweeper and checking Recent Applications and clicking on "Clean Up" works normally. Doing the same with Recent Documents has no effect at all.

I've searched the forums here but failed to find a similar problem. Googling did not turn up anything either (keywords: kickoff "clear recent documents"). Any ideas would be most welcome. As I said this problem has only appeared within the last couple of weeks. Debian Wheezy is a rolling release so I am constantly getting updates to packages.
Cheers & Ciao,
Jonathan

look at the permissions of ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments/ do you own and have write access to the folder and the files within?

google01103 wrote:look at the permissions of ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments/ do you own and have write access to the folder and the files within?

Hi Google,
As you can see, I do indeed.

Code: Select all

drwx------  2 jdkaye jdkaye 4096 ago 20 10:56 RecentDocuments


ciao,
jonathan

couple thing to try:
- add the Lancelot widget and use it's "clear document history"
- try removing ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments/ and letting KDE recreate it

Ok, Since I rebooted last, early this morning, no documents have appeared in the Recent Documents list. Rebooting cleared out the old ones. So now that problem is that it's not recording the Recent Documents. Deleting the RecentDocuments folder and let KDE create a new one and see if that fixes anything.

It's very strange. I deleted the RecentDocuments folder and KDE created a new one instantly. It is empty but there is one entry in KickOff's Recently Used tab. Of course I can't get rid of it. It seems that KDE is keeping these entries somewhere else. Could it be somewhere in /var? I'm stumped.

Thanks,
Jonathan

Try checking the permissions of all folders prior to ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments/
Also, make sure that your system is not trying to use ~/.kde4/ instead.

bcooksley wrote:Try checking the permissions of all folders prior to ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments/
Also, make sure that your system is not trying to use ~/.kde4/ instead.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have a ~/.kde folder but no ~/.kde4 folder. I'm not sure what you mean by "prior to ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments/". Do you mean higher in the file tree? or created prior in time? I am the owner of all the files and folders in the .kde folder, if that's what you mean.
sorry,
jonathan

I'm having exactly the same problem using KDE 4.7.0 on Archlinux. Like jdkaye, I'm also using a Linux 3.0 kernel. I can't imagine the kernel causing this problem, but stranger things have happened.

Related: When this bug appeared, I also found it impossible to change my plasma theme more than once without restarting KDE. In other words, I can't change the theme then change back without starting a new session.

Pennyless wrote:I'm having exactly the same problem using KDE 4.7.0 on Archlinux. Like jdkaye, I'm also using a Linux 3.0 kernel. I can't imagine the kernel causing this problem, but stranger things have happened.

Related: When this bug appeared, I also found it impossible to change my plasma theme more than once without restarting KDE. In other words, I can't change the theme then change back without starting a new session.

Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh!!! I thought once I got 4.7 this problem would disappear. Now there is no hope. I guess I'll just have to learn to live with it.

As a last desperate attempt to fix this, does anyone know where the contents of Recent Documents section of the Recently Used tab of KickOff are kept. It's certainly not in ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments which is empty but there are three documents listed in KickOff.
ciao,
jdk

my recent documents are in the folder ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments (actually ~/.kde4/ in openSuse)

my recent apps are in the file ~/.kde/share/config/kickoffrc (again ~/.kde4/ in openSuse)

try as a diff user

try renaming ~/.kde/share/config/kickoffrc

google01103 wrote:my recent documents are in the folder ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments (actually ~/.kde4/ in openSuse)

my recent apps are in the file ~/.kde/share/config/kickoffrc (again ~/.kde4/ in openSuse)

try as a diff user

try renaming ~/.kde/share/config/kickoffrc

Thanks for the suggestions.
I looked at ~/.kde/share/config/kickoffrc and saw this

[RecentlyUsed]
Applications=Wavesurfer.desktop,kde4-KNode.desktop,pinball.desktop,kde4-dragonplayer.desktop,kde4-kpat.desktop

This does not correspond to the apps listed in Recently Used Applications. I still don't know where it's getting its information from.
ciao,
jdk

jdkaye wrote:As a last desperate attempt to fix this, does anyone know where the contents of Recent Documents section of the Recently Used tab of KickOff are kept. It's certainly not in ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments which is empty but there are three documents listed in KickOff.
ciao,
jdk

Actually jdkaye, that is where recent documents are kept. You should see the contents of that folder change when you open new documents and clear old documents. It is only the display of those documents in the Application Launcher that is broken. The functionality is still there.

By the way, my system uses ~/.kde4 instead of ~/.kde, so make sure you're looking in the right path.

Pennyless wrote:

jdkaye wrote:As a last desperate attempt to fix this, does anyone know where the contents of Recent Documents section of the Recently Used tab of KickOff are kept. It's certainly not in ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments which is empty but there are three documents listed in KickOff.
ciao,
jdk

Actually jdkaye, that is where recent documents are kept. You should see the contents of that folder change when you open new documents and clear old documents. It is only the display of those documents in the Application Launcher that is broken. The functionality is still there.

By the way, my system uses ~/.kde4 instead of ~/.kde, so make sure you're looking in the right path.

Thanks Pennyless.
There are two points.
1. ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments folder has been mostly empty since this problem began. When it has contents, the contents have nothing to do with what appears in KickOff. I conclude that whatever appears in KickOff is stored somewhere else. I repeat the contents or absence of contents of RecentDocuments bears absolutely no relation to what appears in KickOff
2. The question of .kde4 what raised earlier and I answered it. I'll repeat my answer here: I have no .kde4 folder. All the kde configuration material appear in .kde of my home directory.

A final question is the the Applications section of the Recently Used tab works correctly. There is no RecentApplications folder anywhere on my system. Where is this information stored?
Thanks again for the help.
ciao,
jdk

jdkaye wrote:

Pennyless wrote:

jdkaye wrote:As a last desperate attempt to fix this, does anyone know where the contents of Recent Documents section of the Recently Used tab of KickOff are kept. It's certainly not in ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments which is empty but there are three documents listed in KickOff.
ciao,
jdk

Actually jdkaye, that is where recent documents are kept. You should see the contents of that folder change when you open new documents and clear old documents. It is only the display of those documents in the Application Launcher that is broken. The functionality is still there.

By the way, my system uses ~/.kde4 instead of ~/.kde, so make sure you're looking in the right path.

Thanks Pennyless.
There are two points.
1. ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments folder has been mostly empty since this problem began. When it has contents, the contents have nothing to do with what appears in KickOff. I conclude that whatever appears in KickOff is stored somewhere else. I repeat the contents or absence of contents of RecentDocuments bears absolutely no relation to what appears in KickOff
2. The question of .kde4 what raised earlier and I answered it. I'll repeat my answer here: I have no .kde4 folder. All the kde configuration material appear in .kde of my home directory.

A final question is the the Applications section of the Recently Used tab works correctly. There is no RecentApplications folder anywhere on my system. Where is this information stored?
Thanks again for the help.
ciao,
jdk

Regarding your two points:

1. The folder at ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments really is where all of your recent documents are stored when you open them and they're deleted from here when you clear them. The system is currently working for me, and I'm sure it is for you as well. The only problem is that the Kickoff application launcher is NOT reflecting those changes in real time. You can test this if you like; just open the aforementioned directory in Dolphin, open a few files, then refresh Dolphin to see if the contents changed. Now you can open Kickoff > Recently Used and clear recent documents just as you normally would (doesn't matter if they don't show, the menu option still works) and you'll see that those items are gone when you refresh Dolphin.

2. Sorry about that. I didn't fully read your earlier post where you mentioned not having a ~/.kde4 folder.

Pennyless wrote:
Regarding your two points:

1. The folder at ~/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments really is where all of your recent documents are stored when you open them and they're deleted from here when you clear them. The system is currently working for me, and I'm sure it is for you as well. The only problem is that the Kickoff application launcher is NOT reflecting those changes in real time. You can test this if you like; just open the aforementioned directory in Dolphin, open a few files, then refresh Dolphin to see if the contents changed. Now you can open Kickoff > Recently Used and clear recent documents just as you normally would (doesn't matter if they don't show, the menu option still works) and you'll see that those items are gone when you refresh Dolphin.

Everything you say is absolutely true with one crucial exception. Yes, I can control what appears in the RecentDocuments folder. Yes, when I try your experiment (using Konqueror instead of Dolphin) I can clear the contents of the RecentDocuments folder. The problem is that what is in that folder is completely independent of what appears in the Recently Used tab of KickOff. I don't know any better way of expressing it. The RecentDocuments folder can be empty and there are still items I haven't used for days in the Recently Used tab. There can be items in the RecentDocuments folder and they are totally different from what is displayed on the Recently Used tab. The only way I can change what appears in Recently Used is by rebooting. Then it is empty for a while and then 3 or 4 (apparently) randomly selected documents opened several days ago appear.
Thanks again for your help.
ciao,
jdk