[OpenIndiana-discuss] Flag day: Desktop caches not updated

[Marcel Telka]

Hi,

TL;DR: update your system to latest bits and reboot.

It was found recently that some desktop caches were not updated as
expected and designed.  This affected various parts of OpenIndiana.  As
the name suggests those caches are primarily used by desktop users but
there are some exceptions to that rule and even some non-desktop users
have been affected.

The caches affected are updated on as needed basis by the following
smf(7) services:

svc:/application/desktop-cache/desktop-mime-cache:default
svc:/application/desktop-cache/icon-cache:default
svc:/application/desktop-cache/input-method-cache:default
svc:/application/desktop-cache/mime-types-cache:default
svc:/application/desktop-cache/pixbuf-loaders-installer:default


Here are some examples of the issue:


1) the mimeinfo.cache is not updated:

$ ls -l /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root        7103 Apr 26  2024 /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache
$ ls -l /usr/share/applications/org.gtk.*4*
-r--r--r--   1 root     other        188 Sep 19 01:59 /usr/share/applications/org.gtk.Demo4.desktop
-r--r--r--   1 root     other        210 Sep 19 01:59 /usr/share/applications/org.gtk.gtk4.NodeEditor.desktop
-r--r--r--   1 root     other        209 Sep 19 01:59 /usr/share/applications/org.gtk.IconBrowser4.desktop
-r--r--r--   1 root     other        216 Sep 19 01:59 /usr/share/applications/org.gtk.PrintEditor4.desktop
-r--r--r--   1 root     other        233 Sep 19 01:59 /usr/share/applications/org.gtk.WidgetFactory4.desktop
$

The mimeinfo.cache file is designed to be updated on every change in the
/usr/share/applications directory.  We do see above that some files in
the /usr/share/applications directory are newer than the mimeinfo.cache
file and so the mimeinfo.cache update failed.


2) empty loaders.cache file:

I do not have an example for this case handy, but basically the issue
was that either /usr/lib/amd64/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders.cache
and/or /usr/lib/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders.cache was empty with
recent timestamp (newer than all files the loaders.cache file depends
on).


These issues (especially the second one) caused that lightdm failed to
start: https://www.illumos.org/issues/16855


Technically, these are two distinct issues that are tightly related.
The first one is in OpenIndiana since February 2023 and it mostly went
unnoticed because its impact is apparently low.  The second issue was
introduced about three weeks ago.  Since its impact is easily visible
and fatal (failed lightdm) it popped up (almost) immediatelly.


To solve the issue please make sure your service/gnome/desktop-cache
package is at least at version 0.2.2-2024.0.0.17 and then either reboot,
or restart all five affected services:

svcadm restart svc:/application/desktop-cache/desktop-mime-cache:default
svcadm restart svc:/application/desktop-cache/icon-cache:default
svcadm restart svc:/application/desktop-cache/input-method-cache:default
svcadm restart svc:/application/desktop-cache/mime-types-cache:default
svcadm restart svc:/application/desktop-cache/pixbuf-loaders-installer:default


Regards.

-- 
+-------------------------------------------+
| Marcel Telka   e-mail:   marcel at telka.sk  |
|                homepage: http://telka.sk/ |
+-------------------------------------------+