Hi,

some changes in the Gnome world probably have broken Cinnamon's menu ..
at least I don't have *any* entry anymore in the start menu, see
attached screenshot.

Thanks

Norbert

retitle 893510 menu breaks when a desktop file has encoding problems
thanks

The reason was a desktop file that had the *filename* encoding messed
up. Removing or renaming the file to proper encoding fixed the issue.

cinnamon-menu should not die on a wrongly encoded filename, but skip it.

Norbert

Hello,

Bug #893510 in cinnamon-menus reported by you has been fixed in the
Git repository and is awaiting an upload. You can see the commit
message below and you can check the diff of the fix at:

https://salsa.debian.org/cinnamon-team/cinnamon-menus/-/commit/06e1e67ae0428652d4d73945209baaa69418884d
------------------------------------------------------------------------
d/patches: Skip desktop files whose id is not valid UTF-8

The desktop file id handed out by gmenu_tree_entry_get_desktop_file_id()
is the entry's path relative to the application directory, so any byte
of the file or directory name that is not valid UTF-8 is passed through
as-is. Introspection bindings refuse to convert such a string, and since
the Cinnamon menu applet reads the id of every entry in appUtils.js
loadDirectory(), a single badly named file anywhere under an
applications directory makes cjs throw and the exception propagates out
of the applet constructor: the menu button disappears from the panel
entirely.

Add the patch forwarded as linuxmint/cinnamon-menus#85, which validates
the id before handing it to the callback and skips the entry when it is
not valid UTF-8, logging the offending path so it can be found and
renamed.

Closes: #893510

Assisted-by: Claude Code:claude-opus-5
------------------------------------------------------------------------

(this message was generated automatically)
-- 
Greetings

https://bugs.debian.org/893510

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
cinnamon-menus, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 893510@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Fabio Fantoni <fantonifabio@tiscali.it> (supplier of updated cinnamon-menus package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)
Format: 1.8
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2026 14:15:22 +0200
Source: cinnamon-menus
Built-For-Profiles: noudeb
Architecture: source
Version: 6.6.0-2
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Debian Cinnamon Team <debian-cinnamon@lists.debian.org>
Changed-By: Fabio Fantoni <fantonifabio@tiscali.it>
Closes: 893510 1118800
Changes:
 cinnamon-menus (6.6.0-2) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   [ Simon McVittie ]
   * d/control:
     - Add ${gir:Depends} to -dev package
     - Add ${gir:Provides} to -dev package
     - Add B-D on gir1.2-gio-2.0-dev
     - Replace deprecated B-D on libgirepository1.0-dev
     (Closes: #1118800)
 .
   [ Fabio Fantoni ]
   * d/patches: Skip desktop files whose id is not valid UTF-8
     (Closes: #893510)
   * d/not-installed: Drop the file, it only lists files that no longer exist
   * d/control:
     - Mark libcinnamon-menu-3-dev as Multi-Arch: same
     - Point Homepage at the upstream repository
     - Drop the redundant Priority field
     - Drop the redundant Rules-Requires-Root field
     - Bump Standards-Version to 4.7.4
     - Drop ${shlibs:Depends} from gir1.2-cmenu-3.0
   * Update d/copyright
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