To rescue a theme/icons from the command line?
 

Basically, I ran rm -r /foo and by the time I realized that /home was mounted under /foo/bar and pressed Ctrl-C, I ended up with a messed up phone. It is mostly working (some apps crash on start, but the essential ones seem fine), but the theme and most icons are gone. It still displays the text under the icons but no icons. The few apps that do work show up without the title bar, the system and power menus show up as square grey buttons like in Windows 3, fonts are reduced to size 2... you get the idea. Reinstalling individual apps does not bring their icons back. I am out of storage on my PC for a backup and reflash but I can do that if push comes to shove. Of course, I would prefer if there was a better way.

I am not worried about the icons. I can bring them back from a vanilla image. But the theme is a different thing. Reinstalling alpha did not help. I thought of installing beta and switching there and back to see if it helps but I can't switch themes. Settings show up but do not react to buttons. Is there a way to do it by some other way? Or does anyone have a better idea?

I tried a quick search and found this case which is a bit similar but no solution.

Re: Changing a theme from the command line?
 

I'm guessing Maemo can live without a /home, but not without /home/opt, which you've probably, partially, hosed.

In these cases the usual recommendation is to reflash, but knowing/guessing you I expect you'll try to "resuscitate" your N900. Fow now all I can say is good luck! :)

[it's a pity one cannot simply stop time to think about such "useless" but at the same time very interesting problems]

Re: Changing a theme from the command line?
 

I was afraid you'd say that :(

Re: Changing a theme from the command line?
 

You might try to create a list of the packages dpkg thinks are installed and then reinstall each and every package. You will need plenty of bandwidth, better first download all the packages, then do the re-installation.The last command might just download everything if you add '-dy' options.

There might be complaints of apt-get, so please FIRST ask, if anything would be removed or other errors are put out.

Re: Changing a theme from the command line?
 

That's it, thanks michaaa62! Except I used --reinstall too just to make sure, and started in small steps, such as
That seems to have brought the theme back. Most icons are still missing but the windows decorations, buttons and texts look like they should. The auspices look good :)

BTW another reason I was hesitant with the flashing is that I have another device that just wouldn't flash. I have yet to find a solution for that one. Bricking this one would mean I would stay without a phone.

Re: Changing a theme from the command line?
 

@pichlo,

See? all you needed was some luck, and @michaaa62, who always comes to the rescue :)

Re: Changing a theme from the command line?
 

In case anyone's interested, I've resuscitated the blighter. Reinstalling osso-systemui* brought back the themes and maemo-icons-203 brought back most icons. Then it was just a question of finding which apps had missing their icons missing or were otherwise broken and reinstalling those. Now the only two remaining problems are:

1) I have a mouse cursor on the screen. It follows the stylus which is kinda cool and it does not bother me so I am quite happy to leave it as it is but if someone knows what might have caused it I would be quite interested.

2) The icons for status-area-orientationlock-applet is missing and I cannot reinstall the package. It keeps telling me that it cannot be downloaded. I've had the same with some other package and then I've found that the download was called something else than the package name after the installation. Perhaps the same problem? What is the package really called?

Mind you, I would actually prefer to get rid of the package anyway and have the device permanently locked in landscape but apt is telling me that it would render libcpaboutcssu, rtcom-accounts-voip-support, rtcom-messaging-ui-portrait, dsme-thermalobject-surface, modest-home-applet, qtquickcompat and maemo-optify-runonce candidates for autoremove. The ones I am not sure about are the ones in italics. What exactly do they do?

Re: Changing a theme from the command line?
 

Thanks for the feedback! I edited the commands and added the correct options for the install command to reinstall the packages for future reference.

No idea about that cursor...
The package status-area-orientationlock-applet is existing with that nameYou should have any of the cssu-stable or cssu-testing repos enabled to get it.

Re: Changing a theme from the command line?
 

Interesting. This is what I am getting.
I wonder where that difference between my and your 1.0+0cssu4.0 comes from. As far as I can see, the repository is there for 1.0+cssu3.1.0.

Where is the sources file anyway? My /etc/apt/sources.list is empty:
But apt knows about the sources:
I can't believe apt is using the fapman list. The fact that it is identical is clearly just a result of mine laborously keeping HAM and FAM in sync.

Re: Changing a theme from the command line?
 

Never mind, I got the package with wget and installed it with dpkg -i. All is well now (bar that cursor that is, but that's a minor thing).

@michaaa62, thank you for your valuable input. You certainly nudged me in the right direction!