Ubuntu – Broken file type associations after running update-mime-database

file associationfile typegnomemime-type

After running sudo update-mime-database /usr/share/mime my gnome doesn't recognize any file types anymore. In Nautilus all files are now text/plain type and all now open with gedit by default. Gnome-commander does the same.

I guess that it's not that file associations are broken but rather file type recognition problem.

Tried to (not in that order):

  • rerun update-mime-database several times
  • reinstal package gnome-mime-data
  • delete ~/.local/share/applications/*
  • logout and login many times
  • reboot

Nothing helped so far.

My system:

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx)
Gnome 2.30.2

Best Answer

I had a similar problem and I solved it reinstalling the shared-mime-info package with

sudo apt-get install --reinstall shared-mime-info
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