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Fix Exec line in .desktop file has quotes

April 01, 2025 — BarryK

Alfons reported, installed gSmartControl via PKGget in Easy Daedalus 6.6.4. After updating to Easy Daedalus 6.6.5, the menu entry for gSmartControl had disappeared; /usr/share/applications/gsmartcontrol.desktop had been deleted.

When there is a version update, /sbin/fixlayers in the initrd runs, and one thing it does is check the .desktop files are still valid. It looks at the "Exec=..." line and checks that the executable is still there.

In the case of gSmartControl, this is the Exec line:

Exec="/usr/bin/gsmartcontrol-root"

...oh man, no one puts the Exec parameter in quotes! In all the years I have worked with .desktop files, never encountered this. Yes, I suppose it is theoretically legal.

/sbin/fixlayers got thrown by the quotation character. I have put in a fix:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/fd91f6e876ae3d6191043585ed0e6b37111de9c3   

Tags: easy