How to Get Rid of a Misbehaving Replicant Application

Tip submitted by Jorge G. Mare on Thu, 09/24/2009 - 21:09
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Haiku, like BeOS did, has support for what's called replicants. What is a replicant? It is an application that can be embedded into another; to get the idea, they are more or less like the desktop widgets that you may find in other operating systems. Haiku comes with a few replicant applications, such as Clock, ActivityMonitor and DeskCalc. This tip will tell you how to get rid of (in other words, how to close) a misbehaving replicant.

Replicant apps in Haiku

Typically, a user would place their replicant apps in the desktop and keep them there. If for any reason the user does not need a replicant app anymore, it can be easily removed (closed) by right-clicking on the replicant handle and selecting Remove Replicant, as shown in the following screenshot.

Popup menu used to delete (close) replicants.

Like any other applications, replicants can also be badly implemented, and therefore it could happen that the user is unable to remove them because they fail to display the replicant handle or they stop responding altogether to user input. In such situations, it is still possible to get rid of (close) all desktop replicants.

There is a file tracker_shelf located in the /boot/home/config/settings/Tracker that holds the settings information of replicants. Just delete this file and restart Tracker (or Haiku), and your desktop replicants should be gone for good.

Deleting tracker_shelf from Terminal

Open Terminal (Deskbar > Applications > Terminal), and type as follows:

cd /boot/home/config/settings/Tracker
rm tracker_shelf

Deleting tracker_shelf from Tracker

  1. Bring up the Find window using the Alt + F key combination in Tracker or from the Deskbar > Find menu.
  2. In the Find window, type tracker_shelf and press then ENTER key or click the SEARCH button.

    3. Finding the tracker_shelf file from Tracker.

  3. In the query results window (shown in the above screenshot), click on the tracker_shelf file and delete it (press the Del key or drag the file to the trashcan).

Now that you have removed tracker_shelf, restart Tracker or reboot Haiku, and you will see that all your desktop replicants are gone for good.