New – “manually” edited menu-applications file

[Member Daddy Libre]

I have a question on menu-applications (please move to new topic if preferred).
If I understand correctly home/user-name/.icewm/menu-applications
is a link.
I manage a second user, my son, and would like to hide some menu items (totally- e.g.: Internet) and some prog items (partially- e.g.: Preferences->pppoeconf) from him.

Can I create home/user-name/.icewm/menu-applications-2 as root? Then direct it to /usr/share/desktop-menu/.icewm/menu-applications-2 (commented with #) and finally edit home/user-name/.icewm/menu under: menufile “Applications” [icon path] menu-applications-2.

Do I achieve my goal?
If not, how can I?

[Member PPC]

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Daddy Libre wrote:

I have a question on menu-applications (please move to new topic if preferred).

The Moderators will probably mode this to “split” post, because you “necroposted” on a thread that’s dead for almost 2 years.

I think you can acheive your goal, but it’s a bit complex.
~/.icewm/menu-applications is, as you say a symlink- it’s updated every time you update your system or install a .deb package that creates a menu entry.

Note: ~ stands for /home/[user_name]

The way I see it, you can do this:
– Using your son’s user, copy ~/.icewm/menu-applications to a new text file (example: ~/.icewm/kids-menu )
– Edit the file you created, deleting what you do not want to be available to him
– Edit your son’s user’s ~/.icewm/menu file to point to ~/.icewm/kids-menu, instead of ~/.icewm/menu-applications

I did not test this, because all my computers have only one user… But this *should* work.

P.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 3 days ago by PPC.

[Moderator BobC]

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I agree, PPC’s solution should work until you ever reinstall the original menu file. I would make an extra copy of that just in case.

[Forum Admin Dave]

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I am having trouble accessing the forum (though it seems to be getting better).
If I recall correctly, all you need to do is remove the link ~/.icewm/menu-applications and press “update/refresh menu” in the menu (Though I am not sure what command that menu item was last using).

Alternatively (if the menu button does not work) after removing the link you could use one of the 3 options below:
– run “desktop-menu –write-out” in terminal
– run “desktop-menu > ~/.icewm/menu-applications”
– copy the menu-applications file from /usr/share/desktop-menu/.icewm/menu-applications to ~/.icewm/

Removing the link sets the user to “manual” mode for the menu; so you can make changes to the menu-applications file and it will not get overwritten (unless you run the desktop-menu –write-out command). For updating the menu in the future as this would not longer be automatic, run “desktop-menu > ~/temp-menu-file”, then use a program like meld to compare the temp menu file you just made with the menu-applications file and merge the updates you would like.

Computers are like air conditioners. They work fine until you start opening Windows. ~Author Unknown

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