Whiskermenu only show "qubes tools" and "system tools"

User Support
1

After a new/clean install of qubes-os (4.2.2), none of the applications from (any) restored VM is showing in the whiskermenu or in “right-click-on-Desktop” → “Applications”.

  • Qubes (new) menu shows all the applications and they open and work without a problem
  • /home/user/.config/menues/applications-merged is full of .menu files of all the qubes.
  • I tried bringing from backup the content of /home/user/.config/xfce4

nothing worked and since Qubes is my “daily driver” I’d really hate to re-install Qubes all over again if it can be avoided.

Can anyone think of a way to re-populate that menu?

2

Did you try running qvm-sync-appmenus?

3

Yes, I did. it seem to refresh the list of applications (which are already there) but doesn’t change anything for the whiskermenu.

4

Do you see the apps in the Alt+F1 (or “right-click-on-Desktop”) → “Applications”?

5

Up until now the only apps there were Qubes-tools and system-tools. This morning there was an update for the wonix-template-17 and after running it (from the “Qubes update” icon), the “wonix-template-17” is now appearing in the application menu and in whisker menu as well.
However, forcing an update to the rest of the templates in the same manner did not bring any of them to the menu.

6

I also tried to delete and restore a template from backup, thinking that along the process the OS will re-populate the menu. Didn’t work.

7

However, a quick check shows that it only contains the “whonix-template-17: Qubes settings” and not thunar, terminal and a few more that do appear in the Qubes menu.