AusImage Realm Blog

Nautilus and Parties...

Folder icons in Nautilus...

I discovered how to mass-assign folder icons in Nautilus the other day. I am putting it in my blog as much for my recollection as for the benefit of the Community.

Nautilus' meta info is stored in $HOME/.nautilus/metafiles . For each folder visited local or not a Xml file is created with a quoted name of its path (eg file:%2F%2F%2Fmedia%2Fstuff102%2Fmusic for /media/stuff102/music ) The contents of this file is like the following:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<directory><file name="folder1" timestamp="1252361434" custom_icon="feed.jpg"><keyword name="new"/></file><file name="folder2" timestamp="1252361434" custom_icon="feed.jpg"><keyword name="new"/></file></directory>

We are interested in the custom_icon value which will set the icon shown for a folder. Its value can be a relative path to a file within the named folder. It is important to note that modifying or adding the value to the file attribute does not automatically update the folder icons. Nautilus must be terminated and restarted for any changes to take affect and any updates via properties will overwrite the changes.

Using this hack, I even managed to easily update folder icons for an sftp path on my network and then duplicate the same meta file for a sshfs mount of the same data. I am not sure what Nautilus will do if there is a mistake in meta xml file, so be careful and be aware of what you change.

New York Team Release Party

I have put a reservations in for our Party to be held in Waterloo, NY for November 8th, 2009. We will have public presentations from 1-3pm preceeding our party. I expect many members from nearby Rochester, Syracuse, Ithaca and maybe even farther will attend. Hopefully, I will also see many new faces as well.

Blog Ubuntu NewYork

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