Restore Menu

[drbearsec]

So apparently I was stupid...

I downloaded Recon-NG and Armitage and installed them on Kali. I wanted to add them to the Kali menu. Instead of taking the time to find how to do this, I instead went to the edit menu function in Gnome... I saw all the links under OTHER... I added Recon and Armitage links to that same group and saved... and now the Kali menu is gone and all the shortcuts are in Alphabetical order under Other.

So my questions:

1) How do I restore the Kali menu listing all the shortcuts in the nice organized fashion?

2) Where is the correct place to add shortcuts to new tools and have them show up in the Kali menu?


Thanks!

[bandit]

The menu is built from the *.desktop files in /usr/share/applications

You should be able to boot up a Kali live cd and copy these files off, then use them to fix your current installation.

Adding a menu entry is as simple as copying one of these pre-existing files and editing it to your needs.

[excidius]

My Kali section disapeared from the File Menu too.. Something I installed must have done this.. I'm not sure what.. I installed, Deluge, Jdownloader and RealVNC.
Does anybody know how to restore it?

[SharkBait]

If you used the menu editor utility (Main Menu) and nothing else then all you have to do is delete the file in ~/.config/menus/

*It should be the only file in there, that should restore the applications menu.

[excidius]

The menu is built from the *.desktop files in /usr/share/applications

All my Kali .desktop files are still in the folder. 'usr/share/applications' They're still not showing up in the menu though.

I tried booting off the live cd, and copying the .desktop files over my local installation... but still the same results.

Any more ideas?

[barry99705]

Just noticed a package named "Kali Linux custom menu" in the Add/Remove Software app. For some reason when I did the network install none of the Kali packages were installed. I probably messed up something with the netboot settings, not sure.

[Messiah]

Copying files from /usr/share/applications from liveCD doesn't take good result. Menu is unavailable yet((( Any suggestions how it's constructed?

[burg3r]

guyz i had a similar problem , i was running apt-get upgrade and then going through the edit menus option , i tried to enable something , and the menu was gone , i tried to use the revert option on edit menus but nothing , i am using the kali linux vmware image , so i just restored it back

[Messiah]

Oh! I've fixed menu by deleting ~/.local/share/applications directory and ~/.config/menus directory. It's work well now!

[hdcase]

I can confirm the fix stated by Messiah.

[Hits_S]

I made the whole process satisfactorily using configuration files in the /usr/share/applications/, but when you install any other applications these shortcuts menu disappear.
Have you checked that you have known behavior and fix it?
I have not managed to avoid the loss of the menu every time I install an application with apt-get and processed triggers for menu.

[KhaOS]

Guys, is really easy to fix...

All you have to do in your /home/your dir/ just erase - delete - remove the following folders "desktop-directories" and "menus", found in .local and in .config folders.
then, logout, login again, and there you have yor applications menu back. I got the Kali menu entry back.

Do it at your own risk, it works for me. you may just wait a word from the moderators with an oficial answer..

[x44]

Messiah is right on here. This fix also worked for me. For those who do not know, these directories are located in /root.

rm -r .local/share/applications
rm -r .config/menus
reboot

After rebooting when system comes backup the menu appears again.

The problem is when you edit the menu in any kind of way, the custom kali menu from Applications disappears.

[fanfan]

Oh! I've fixed menu by deleting ~/.local/share/applications directory and ~/.config/menus directory. It's work well now!

Good idea！I've fixed menu！Thank you！

[Hits_S]

Messiah is right on here. This fix also worked for me. For those who do not know, these directories are located in /root.

rm -r .local/share/applications
rm -r .config/menus
reboot

After rebooting when system comes backup the menu appears again.

The problem is when you edit the menu in any kind of way, the custom kali menu from Applications disappears.

When you edit the menu otherwise or when you install an application with "apt-get install" and triggers are reconfigured. That makes entries in the menu disappear

[Coded32]

delete the config files under

 ~/.config/menus/

do this:

rm -rf  ~/.config/menus/

resolved.

[Tron]

You dont need to go so crazy trying to delete everything. Just remove or rename the gnome app menu file which is being set and making us loose our nice Kali menu:

mv ~/.config/menus/gnome-applications.menu ~/.config/menus/gnome-applications.menu.backup
restart

[k4lk1]

guyz i had a similar problem , i was running apt-get upgrade and then going through the edit menus option , i tried to enable something , and the menu was gone , i tried to use the revert option on edit menus but nothing , i am using the kali linux vmware image , so i just restored it back

If you used the menu editor utility (Main Menu) and nothing else then all you have to do is delete the file in ~/.config/menus/

*It should be the only file in there, that should restore the applications menu.

Ok it worked, active the hidden files first and than in ~/.config/menus/ delete the file, Thanks

[Arosa]

There was one update today named "kali-menus", maybe it was fixed.
Try apt-get update && apt-get upgrade.

[Hakuza]

[QUOTE=SharkBait;303]If you used the menu editor utility (Main Menu) and nothing else then all you have to do is delete the file in ~/.config/menus/
QUOTE]

SharkBait -> Confirmed this worked for me. My issue: I tried to edit the menu using the menu editor - that borked up the menu (Kali Linux menu items disappeared). Resolved by rm ~/.config/menus/gnome*

HAK

[testingresults]

Oh! I've fixed menu by deleting ~/.local/share/applications directory and ~/.config/menus directory. It's work well now!

This worked perfectly for me as well.

[drbearsec]

Update:
This is a quick how-to for those having issues getting new applications installed on Kali and accessing them in the menu and in any path.

In this case, I'm not referring to something in the repository (although that could theoretically come into play in the future), but instead something you download like Recon-ng or RAWR... two excellent tools I hope to see as part of the distro soon (hint hint to any admins ;-) ) This shows you how to do it with RAWR as I am still having some issues with Recon-ng.

After downloading and extracting, I prefer to move the folders someplace...

You can obviously echo $PATH and add the application to one of those paths...

I instead chose to put them in the /usr/share/ where many other program folders reside.

I then went to /usr/bin and create a symbolic link to the scripts (ln -s /path/to/script linkname or ln -s /usr/share/rawr/rawr.py rawr). Now I can obviously call rawr from anywhere.

I then go to the /usr/bin/applications and copy one of the .desktop files... I picked something in the same folder I wanted rawr in (OSINT). Make sure for the exec field you do sh -c "rawr -h;${SHELL:-bash}" otherwise the shell will not stay open.

Save and then copy the desktop file to /usr/share/kali-menu/applications and it should now be in the menu.

Still figuring out recon as the symbolic link won't run it properly as it is calling a framework from the py script and I'm just trying to figure out which one to link to get it right.

If anyone has a more elegant way, please feel free to post.

Thanks!

[Arosa]

They fixed the bug.
Now you can edit the menu without mess the kali menu.

The changelog:

kali-menu (1.330) kali; urgency=low
2
3 * Added a link to gnome-applications-merged as a walk around to
4 editing menu entries.
5
6 -- Mati Aharoni <[email protected]> Mon, 25 Mar 2013 07:49:01 -0400

[jerichodotm]

The problem was with the code in the gnome menu app. It's all over the place. Muts did a nice job creating a workaround to a gnome problem. You can see this your self if you run the gnome menu app with strace. ie: strace alacarte. Alacarte truly is a horrible, horrible program.

[Swoorup]

Thanks got it fixed as well!

[carmila]

Oh! I've fixed menu by deleting ~/.local/share/applications directory and ~/.config/menus directory. It's work well now!

agree...by following your tutorial im able to fix my menu..here is a screenshot as a prove..
this is before the fix..


this is after the fix.


thank you messiah..

[RaderCad]

I am still having a bit of a problem with the Kali menu......
It seems that most newly added Kali programs are not showing up in the menu.
The menu editor shows all of the programs in every Kali category.
However, the active menu is missing many of my newly added Kali repository programs.
For instance in the Vulnerability side the Nessus, NeXpose, OpenVAS and SAINT are missing from the Kali menu options.
All of them show up in the edit menu options and the shared application directories, /usr/share/kali-menu/applications, but not in the application menu.....

The fix of deleting the ~/.local/share/applications directory and ~/.config/menus directory does not fix the problem.....

Aside the fix from excellent drbearsec tutorial/fix above, for adding programs NOT in the repository, can this problem ever be fixed?

[yhi]

didnt worked for me

i lost whole taskbar

m using kali 2.0
everything was fine last week
but i lost taskbar of top

[timster]

am using 2.0 too. this worked for me :

rm -rf ~/.cache/sessions

hope that helps!

didnt worked for me

i lost whole taskbar

m using kali 2.0
everything was fine last week
but i lost taskbar of top

[ioaniatr]

My menu was disapeared after configuring tweek tool. I discovered that tweek tool has reset all options after changing workspace parameters from dynamic to static. I restored applications menu and now i'm trying to restore sidebar and everything else. I had no idea of what was enabled and what was not ...

I searched into my hard drive and found a older virtual Kali Linux instalation, made screenshots into a zip file and move it into my latest Kali to restore the options.

Finaly, i have restore them all. The problem seemed to be in extensions tab of tweek tool, everything had switched off. I could not upload the zip file here since there is a file limit of 97.7KB and my file is 1.19MB. There are about 12 screenshots that i made. If anyone needs it i can send over the zip file. A restore defaults button really would help in this case.