Hiya,
I'm cross-posting to kde-core-devel a problem that has frequently popped up on
the Kiosk list that so far has remained an unsolved mystery.
There are several threads on the list regarding the fact that menu
restrictions don't seem to apply.
Part of the problem is a bug in kiosktool, for which a workaround exists:
That alone is not enough though. Jonathan Riddell posted a patch for Kubuntu
which was reported to help for one person (but not for a couple of others),
and which now seems to be hidden behind a password, so I can't access it
anymore:
Removing the XDG menu file also apparently helps in some cases:
Reported troublesome distros are at least Mandriva, Gentoo, Fedora and
Kubuntu. See these threads for some of the more recent occurrences:
There are many many more, but they add little or no additional information.
Does anyone feel confident enough about these issues to explain the problem
once and for all? I have no idea how all this XDG menu stuff works, nor does
anyone else on the Kiosk list. There's just some scattered hints and tips,
but mostly questions and reports about it still not working right.
Also, Aaron, do you know if Kicker may be a troublemaker here? Jonathan, do
you still have the patch available to share with the world?
Help is most appreciated.

The problem is that since KDE 3.4 many of those distributions _renamed_ the
respective applications.menu file and included patches so that KDE parses for

/

_instead_ of "applications.menu" and the like.

The motivation is that these distributions want to offer seperate menus for
KDE and GNME by this workaround.
Effectively this renders any update to KDE 3.4 or any self-compiled
kiosktool-packages (that don't take the patched kdelibs into account)
useless.

For any debian and kubuntu based distribution it helps as a workaround to
either
- copy the applications.menu file created by the kiosktool in the respective
profile over to kde-applications.menu / copy the applications from an
existing kiosk profile over.
- or compile your sources (kdelibs IIRC) without using the respective patch
that changes "applications.menu" to something else.

I only got aware of the "secret" behind this bug a few weeks ago (and would
enjoy to give a mighty kick into the of some packagers).

To refine my answer:

Part of the problem is a bug in kiosktool, for which a workaround exists:

IMH there is no bug in kiosktool as the specifications don't define a
kde-applications.menu.

Removing the XDG menu file also apparently helps in some cases:

I would recommend _not_ to remove the / as
this will have the effect that all kiosk profiles created from scratch won't
have the ability to inherit from each other. So while this workaround would
make the profile "kind" of work it has some severe disadvantages later on.

Reported troublesome distros are at least Mandriva, Gentoo, Fedora and
Kubuntu. See these threads for some of the more recent occurrences:

Debian as well as Kubuntu shipped this patch which is guilty since KDE 3.4
(Debian still does):

kde.orig/kded/kbuildsycoca.cpp

@@ -379,7 +379,7 @@
connect(g_vfolder, SIGNAL(newService(const QString &, KService **)),
this, SLT(slotCreateEntry(const QString &, KService **)));
- VFolderMenu::SubMenu *kdeMenu =
g_vfolder->parseMenu("applications.menu", true);
+ VFolderMenu::SubMenu *kdeMenu =
g_vfolder->parseMenu("kde-applications.menu", true);

KServiceGroup *entry = g_bsgf->addNew("/", kdeMenu->directoryFile, 0,
false);
entry->setLayoutInfo(kdeMenu->layoutList);

I guess that other distributions do similar stuff. Just remove this patch from
your sources and recompile and all your problems will disappear. If this is
not possible follow the advice of my previous e-Mail.

Also, Aaron, do you know if Kicker may be a troublemaker here? Jonathan,

Kicker is not guilty ;-)

Help is most appreciated.

Hope it helped.

Thursday 19 January 2006 13:58, Torsten Rahn wrote:
Help is most appreciated.

Hope it helped.

At least it clears up some questions I have. Let's wait for the responses from
those who actually reported the problems, I am only the messenger trying to
help out on the kiosk list.

(btw, if people know about kiosk and are willing to help out, the list could
use some more insight. it's a fairly low-traffic list, but about a quarter or
so of the questions there remains unanswered because nobody steps up due to
lack of knowledge, time or whatever. so Torsten, and others with the
appropriate knowledge, please consider subscribing there!)

Am Donnerstag, 19. Januar 2006 12:25 schrieb Jonathan Riddell:

Here's the patch:

http://muse.19inch.net/~jr/tmp/kubuntu_02_kmenu.diff

This patch will just help for _NEW_ KDE Profiles created with the _patched_
KDE-Kiosktool or for "handcrafted" profiles based on kde-applications.menu.

It won't help if you created Kiosk Profiles using KDE 3.3 and/or the Kiosktool
w/o the patch. So if you update from (<=) KDE 3.3 to KDE 3.4 or 3.5 you need
to rename the applications.menu to kde-applications.menu beforehand and only
then you can work on your profiles using the patched Kiosktool!

I personally find it a shame that distributions in this case deliberately
violate standards which were accepted by KDE as well as gnome already.
Even worse: they do it without mentioning.
They just put KDE into a bad light by doing so (because critical stuff won't
work afterwards on enterprise level).

The issue is that Kubuntu and Debian move the menu file to
kde-applications.menu. I don't know what other distros do (some just
share the menu between Gnome and KDE of course) but I doubt the same
patch will help them.