These error messages indicate that one or more icon theme packages are not found.
I saw a very similar error to yours on my copy of Lubuntu 20.04 when starting nvim-qt
and I fixed the issue by installing the missing package.
user@host:~$ nvim-qt
user@host:~$ Icon theme "elementary" not found.
user@host:~$ sudo su -
root@host:~# apt search elementary-icon-theme
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
elementary-icon-theme/focal,focal 2.7.1-0ubuntu7 all
simple and appealing Tango-styled icon theme
root@host:~# apt install elementary-icon-theme
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
elementary-icon-theme
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,984 kB of archives.
After this operation, 32.5 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/universe amd64 elementary-icon-theme all 2.7.1-0ubuntu7 [1,984 kB]
Fetched 1,984 kB in 2s (1,134 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package elementary-icon-theme.
(Reading database ... 278482 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../elementary-icon-theme_2.7.1-0ubuntu7_all.deb ...
Unpacking elementary-icon-theme (2.7.1-0ubuntu7) ...
Setting up elementary-icon-theme (2.7.1-0ubuntu7) ...
gtk-update-icon-cache: The generated cache was invalid.
WARNING: icon cache generation failed for /usr/share/icons/elementary
root@host:~# exit
logout
user@host:~$ ls -al /usr/share/icons/elementary
total 276
drwxr-xr-x 16 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 .
drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 ..
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 actions
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 animations
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 apps
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 878 Dec 5 2010 AUTHORS
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 categories
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 142 Feb 21 2011 CONTRIBUTORS
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 devices
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 emblems
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 197800 Jan 23 21:41 .icon-theme.cache
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4932 Mar 24 2011 index.theme
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 mimes
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 notifications
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 panel
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 places
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 social
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 status
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 stock
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jan 23 21:41 tools
user@host:~$ nvim-qt
user@host:~$
I am not sure why installation threw this WARNING: icon cache generation failed for /usr/share/icons/elementary
but when I ran nvim-qt
subsequent times, that initial error no longer showed up.