Salvaging .cinnamon & .config from broken system not enough for recovery?

[Mic]

Hello,
I salvaged .cinnamon and .config directories from $HOME on a broken system and put it into $HOME of a fresh install, assuming that should do it.
Alas, now I only got the changing background images, but no panel, no menu etc.
Ah, yes, the Welcome-window pops up.
Any idea what’s missing or maybe even wrong?
Thanks a lot, Michael.

[petsam]

@Mic

Any idea what’s missing or maybe even wrong?

Nice joke . What you did was the wrong thing .

Create a new user and login to that.
Compare with the broken user account relevant folders, and merge one file/folder at a time.
I know it takes time, but I don’t think there’s an easier approach.

I hope the lesson is learned

[Mic]

Glad, you enjoyed it!
Anyway, as I pointed out the original system is broken, i.e. the old FS is wrecked and not anymore.
Regarding configuration/preferences data, those two directories is what I could salvage.
The rest just gives I/O errors.
On a third thought, looking at the .cinnamon file-tree I’d try again with .config/cinnamon-session left out.
‘menus’ & ‘nemo’ in .config is hopefully ok…

[eznix]

Here is a breakdown of what I copy from $HOME to capture and transfer my desktop settings under Cinnamon:

[Mic]

@eznix

Here is a breakdown of what I copy from $HOME to capture and transfer my desktop settings under Cinnamon:

Thanks a lot for that!
So this is .themes and .local the copy has missing.
I can’t find .themes at another user’s $HOME. So that might not be the problem.
Meanwhile I managed to have mouse parms, background and hot corners transferred from the old config, but there’s no panel and no desktop context menu (right-click).
Let’s see what’s mergable …

[Mic]

After some poking around (which I don’t like) I ended up using dconf-editor.
It was no immediate help and it needs to be used very carefully to avoid contradicting settings etc.
So up to another search on the Net.
In a nutshell, the panel and its “entourage” (menu etc.) retained all my settings but the panel itself was missing.
<ctrl><alt>T brought up the terminal window (also with all its settings - yay!) and
/usr/share/cinnamon/cinnamon-settings/cinnamon-settings.py panel
launched the panel editor from the shell.
There “Add new panel” (bottom) was enough to get the missing panel and all my settings back!
Source: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=257031