So getting straight to it: in nautilus, all the metadata about files as they appear in the GUI (so: icon position, size, emblems, etc) exist in a series of files in $HOME/.local/share/gvfs-metadata
(each file in there related to a filesystem)

caja, on the other hand, uses the SAME FILES – but sometimes different metadata.

So, when I moved from gnome2/nautilus to mate/caja, I found that my desktop icons retained their same sizes, emblems… but not location.

Why is this so?

So if you try running this:

bounty:~ $ gvfs-info -a "metadata::*" ~Desktop

You should get a bunch of output, something like:

attributes:
metadata::annotation:
metadata::emblems: [certified, desktop, system]
metadata::icon-scale: 1
metadata::nautilus-default-view: OAFIID:Nautilus_File_Manager_List_View
metadata::nautilus-icon-position: 1432,-3
metadata::nautilus-icon-position-timestamp: 1226057199
metadata::nautilus-icon-view-auto-layout: true
metadata::nautilus-icon-view-sort-by: name
metadata::nautilus-icon-view-tighter-layout: false
metadata::nautilus-icon-view-zoom-level: 1
metadata::nautilus-list-view-sort-column: date_modified
metadata::nautilus-list-view-sort-reversed: true
metadata::nautilus-list-view-zoom-level: 1
metadata::nautilus-window-geometry: 857x761+2017+96
metadata::nautilus-window-scroll-position: file:///home/nemo/Desktop/sunpath

If you’ve been playing with caja already, you’ll have some “metadata::caja-*” attributes too.

So in a nutshell, metadata::emblems and metadata::icon-scale naturally enough are seen by caja as easily as nautilus, but metadata::nautilus-icon-position is invisible to caja, which expects to see metadata::caja-icon-position.

Converting from one to the other is almost trivial. Lookup the value with gvfs-info, then set the value with gvfs-set-attribute.

Right?

Not quite.

I did that, and while the relative positions of my desktop icons were correct, they were too far apart (and so: some were off the screen)

For reasons I do not know (and for all I know, are specific to some quirk in my personal setup), I had to scale all the geometry values down by approx a third. (for the record, that means my caja-icon-position seems to be based off my screen resolution, whilst nautilus’ were not?

Anyway, my final solution was this short script (I named it gvfs2matevfs)

#!/bin/bash

iconpos=$(gvfs-info -a "metadata::nautilus-icon-position" "$@" | grep nautilus-icon-position | awk -F: '{print $4}')

# so by my estimate, caja-icon-position is about 2/3 the value of nautilus-icon-position
if [ -n "$iconpos" ] ; then
  ex=$(( ${iconpos%,*} * 67/100))
  wy=$(( ${iconpos#*,} * 67/100))
  gvfs-set-attribute -t string "$@" "metadata::caja-icon-position" $ex,$wy
  echo "$* $iconpos : $ex,$wy"
fi

I then ran this this thusly (note: from the Desktop)

bounty:~/Desktop $ find . -maxdepth 1 -print0 | xargs -0 -n 1 ~/bin/gvfs2matevfs

And (after refreshing the desktop icons by moving to an empty workspace and hitting F5) viola, there they are, where I want them!

(oh, and you’ll have to run all the above from within a running mate/caja environment, otherwise gvfs isn’t visible)

Look no further than $HOME/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/home*

I assume Mate (being a fork of Gnome2) has somewhere similar. GNOME3? No idea.

Then I logged in and…

…wait, what’s that? XDG Base Directories?

OK, so, we all know and love (hate?) our ~/Desktop, ~/Downloads, ~/Templates, ~/Public, ~/Documents, ~/Music, ~/Pictures, ~/Videos directories, right? Well, they’re defined as a freedesktop standard (see here: http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html ), and are configured locally at: ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

So prior to logging in to X, I had three of those eight already, since they had actual content from my backups – ie, were worth restoring already. They were: ~/Desktop, ~/Public,  and ~/Videos

After logging in, I naturally gained the other 5.

But what else got pushed into $HOME? Luckily for posterity, I saved a file list both before and after. So, for no more than a simple login to X, and run a few apps (discounting internal configuration tools, I think I’ve really only run gnome-terminal, firefox, thunderbird, chromium and libreoffice so far), I have these files/directories extra…

• .adobe
• .config
• .dbus
• .dmrc
• .esd_auth
• .face
• .gconfd
• .gksu.lock
• .gnome2
• .gnome2_private
• .gstreamer-0.10
• .gvfs
• .ICEauthority
• .icons
• .libreoffice
• .linuxmint
• .local
• .macromedia
• .mozilla
• .nautilus
• .pekwm
• .pki
• .themes
• .thumbnails
• .thunderbird
• .Xauthority
• .xsession-errors

So, there is a list I only expect to grow (but not to track) over time, and it’s entirely possible I’ve missed some (I’ve certainly skipped a few I know I added manually (.fonts, .fontconfig) since I don’t know if they’d have been automatically added or not.

Anyway, the upshot of all this? Hello cruft!

0. get pekwm (package, compile from source, whatever). duh.

1. tell gnome2 to use it. ie, set ‘pekwm’ in /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager via gconf-editor or equivalent.

2. Discover that gnome2 still doesn’t pick it up, and get an error in .xsession-errors like this:

gnome-session[2010]: WARNING: Unable to find provider 'pekwm' of required component 'windowmanager'

Solve by creating $HOME/.config/autostart/pekwm.desktop with the following (or similar)…

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=/usr/local/bin/pekwm
Hidden=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name[en_AU]=Window Manager
Name=Window Manager
Comment[en_AU]=our windowmanager
Comment=our windowmanager

3. Make sure your own pekwm configuration is in $HOME/.pekwm too

note: at work I have this setup, but against ‘mate’. Thus: /desktop/mate/session/required_components/windowmanager, and /usr/share/applications/pekwm.desktop with content of:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=pekwm
Exec=pekwm
NoDisplay=true
# name of loadable control center module
X-MATE-WMSettingsModule=pekwm
# name we put on the WM spec check window
X-MATE-WMName=Pekwm
# back compat only
X-MateWMSettingsLibrary=pekwm
X-MATE-Autostart-Phase=WindowManager
X-MATE-Provides=windowmanager
X-MATE-Autostart-Notify=true

No, I don’t know how I got either of those pekwm.desktop files. I think with mate, I copied a different one, and tuned to pekwm. With my newer (oddly) gnome2 setup, it magiced in somehow when I was testing with a test account…

My setup is… gnome2 (thanks linuxmint, debian edition) with pekwm as the windowmanager (that’s /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager to you, gconftool), and xcompmgr to give me nifty compositing and real shadows on menus (so far, I’m toying with “xcompmgr -c -r 8 -l 1 -t 1 -o 0.6 -f -D 0.01 -I 0.1 -O 0.1″ 

It’ll be nice to have my real $HOME as the foundation of my desktop again!

I was intending on building up my zsh(1) and mutt(1) configs before tackling the rebuild of my desktop –  the original catalyst of the idea.

But since I was rebuilding my account from across a nearby spare account, I thought I’d use it to take a peek at gnome3 and Unity, and so did “apt-get dist-upgrade” my Ubuntu 11.04 install.

…

A broken update later, I figured I’d install from scratch, and have gotten distracted these last few days with exploring XFCE, LXDE, Unity, Gnome3 and KDE. I’m testing them in a spare account, so as to not clutter up my main $HOME with cruft too quickly while I learn the ropes.

I gotto say, KDE has grown on me. I think its interface is a horrible hodgepodge when it comes to usability – especially out-of-the-box usability, but behind the stab-your-eyes-out bling, it’s really quite feature rich, and I’m all but thinking I’ll be moving to it. The real question for me is how many of my existing gnome-ish apps do I bring with me (eg: rhythmbox, pidgin), and how many will I adopt the KDE equivalents (konsole probably, dolphin…

Assuming I *do* go with KDE, mind you…

Like I said, KDE has grown on me, but I’m not quite sure yet if it’s a beauty spot, or merely a wart. (or indeed, a tumor. Itz not a toomaaaa!!

Interesting times indeed… full reviews will come later? =)

• I’m a bit of a hoarder …arguably more than a “bit”, actually.

Combine these two points, and I can point to dotfiles in my $HOME directory that date back over a decade. In fact, the oldest four date to 2001…

How has this come about? Well, as I’ve upgraded machines over the years, I’ve carried my $HOME with me. After all, it has my stuff in it!  Including my customisations. The .bash_profile (2001) for instance, contains the last iteration of my bash prompt before I moved to zsh. (my current zsh prompt can trace it’s derivation through bash in 2001, all the way back to a 4DOS prompt configuration that I set up around 1994. For the record, I’ve searched for my old 4DOS configurations, but failed to find them.)

I have dotfiles from obscure chat programs that I no longer use (.goofeypw – 2002), from apps I’ve forgotten I ever used (.coldsyncrc – 2003), apps I’ve long avoided using (.lynxrc – 2005), and so on. In some cases they’re newer files from a utility I still use, but which has changed where it keeps it’s dotfile data:

-rw-r--r-- 23 nemo 24576 Oct  6  2009 .clivecache
-rw-r--r-- 23 nemo    43 Oct  6  2009 .clivelast

-rw-r--r-- 2 nemo 364544 Dec 19 22:16 .cache/clive/cache
-rw-r--r-- 2 nemo     26 Dec 19 22:17 .cache/clive/last

Worst though, is that some of this dotfile cruft causes issues with current apps, since they sometimes attempt to maintain backwards compatibility with older configurations. Notably, I once had competing flash plugins in firefox – which had the effect that one flash-video based website would refuse to play videos and tell me I had to upgrade to flash 9, whilst about:plugins would happily announce that I HAD flash9. From memory, it was fixed when I found and removed an old flash8 .so that I found sitting in ~/.netscape. Ouch! Other similar oddities have crept into my Gnome2 configuration also, but have as yet resisted resolution.

All of this has driven me to ask…

Am considering a complete $HOME dotfile cruft purge. Reconfigure from scratch all but vitals (eg: .ssh) Anyone else done this? !lazyweb
— @nemo / identi.ca – July 2011

…and in doing so, to also clear my dotfile cruft – only importing what I need, and taking the effort to clean up the configuration of apps which have spaghetti conf files. (mutt, I’m looking at you especially!)

This is my $HOME. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

…and I’m rebuilding it.

This is my story.

But I think it’s wrong. I’m not a fan of chrome, basically. This is how I see them…

IE

She used to be ugly and obnoxious, but she’s had quite a makeover in both departments. Not enough to want to spend time with her, but you don’t feel dirty if your friends spend time with her at least.

Opera

She’s slightly-more-attractive-than-average, slightly-more-smarter-than-average, but is astonishingly arrogant and thinks she’s a mensa supermodel. She had one clever idea once as a kid (though in truth, Galeon thought of it first). Some people are swayed by her confidence/arrogance, but most don’t want to get involved.

Safari

She’s the anonymous quiet one. She does seem to always have the latest shiny phone gadget though…

Chrome

She’s the kid who grew up and is suddenly a whole bunch of hot, fast and easy.  …But if you spend time with her, you’ll quickly discover she has the depth of a puddle – and if you don’t want to do things her way – well, she can’t easily think of another way to do them, so you probably end up adjusting yourself to suit her and/or getting frustrated…

Firefox

She used to be THE hot one, but looks a bit ordinary in comparison to Chrome. But she’s working to keep trim. You can talk to her, but she’s got so many ideas that you may have to work with her a little bit to get her to talk your own language. Basically, she’s can be a bit high maintenance at first, but then she’s just your seamless companion who Knows What You Like!

Galeon

She was the genius child savant who, according to the few that met her, was going to grow up to be a revolutionary. So they left her to do that, and she starved to death on the side of the information superhighway instead…

* create an m4a file (I made mine exactly 40seconds according to audacity and saved as a .wav, then used faac to convert to m4a (faac in.wav –title “ringtone experiment” -o tone.m4a ; mv tone.m4a tone.m4r)

* copy tone into iPhone://iTunes_Control/Ringtones/tone.m4r

* edit iPhone://iTunes_Control/iTunes/Ringtones.plist to add in the details of the new ringtone. Fortunately I had an existing one already, so I just copied that – updating the GUID (I changed one character), the Name (“funky new ringtone”) and the Total Time (40000) fields.

…and bingo, the ringtone is visible in the settings (selectable, plays), but does not lock in as the ringtone to use! ok, clearly some work needed.

incidentally, this is a 32GB iPhone 3Gs with iOS4.0.2, never been jailbroken or anything underhanded done to it before. It was unlocked from the carrier a few days ago (thanks .au law) and that required a lengthy restore, but otherwise smooth.

…ok, so back to it: plugged it into iTunes (Mac) – it couldn’t read from the device (an error!)

…rebooted phone – and the new ring tone now works correctly. YAY! =) is this success?

…plugging it into iTunes again and… it’s all “Verifying iPhone” at me – something I don’t generally recall. …ok, it’s backing up as normal now…

and the ringtone tab in iTunes tells me it doesn’t know about the tone I added in, it’s syncing, so I suspect it’ll delete my added tone…

…and checking in my iPhone after it’s done, what do you know – my custom added ringtone is all gone. Checking back via linux – and the tone.m4r file has been deleted, Ringtones.plist has been completely rewritten.

So, I assume (not surprisingly at all) that iTunes needs to know about it, as the authorative master, and tell the iPhone how it’s gonna be. This fits with my observed philosophy of the iPhone – as an adjunct to the master information on the computer.

…

so, round 2… I add the m4r into the iTunes library – it automatically adds it in as a ringtone – that’s nice. I assume iTunes assumed it was a ringtone by the file extension. And in the iPhone tab it shows up as available to be sync’d… and bingo. it works.

ok, so not a pure linux solution – unless you never sync your phone to iTunes anyway – but it DOES let you make a custom ringtone without requiring garageband. That’s something isn’t it?

And I assume the method would work under windows too… anyone want to give it a go and get back to me?

In fact, atq is literally out of order – I guess the idea is that you pipe it through sort. very very old-school thinking

At the other end of the scale, at -c provides an information overload of EVERYTHING about the job. (60+ lines of env? yikes. I don’t need to know that most of the time!)

So where is the simple and useful summary that I’d genuinely expect of atq?
ie, not only the queued command times, but WHAT those commands are – one per line.

As a result, here is my simple “batq” – a better atq

#!/bin/bash

# a better atq
#
# returns the original atq output in bold
# AND IN ADDITION, ALSO:
# * returns items sorted
# * the intended working directory
# * the command to be run
#
        # TODO:
        # $command is not robust - will fail on multiple lines

function do_extraqinfo() {
    while read job ; do
        jobid=$(echo $job | awk '{print $1}')
        detail=$(at -c $jobid)
        dir=$(echo "$detail" | egrep ^cd | sed -e 's/cd \(.*\) || {/\1/g')
        command=$(echo "$detail" | tail -1)
        # alter the following line if the bold offends you
        tput bold ; echo -n "$job" ; tput sgr0
        echo "  $dir    $command"
    done
} 

atq | sort | do_extraqinfo