[ale] Gnome-panel failure (seeking critque on solution)

Sun Apr 24 01:38:44 EDT 2011

Hey Richard:

The disappearing gnome panel problem was noted
in another recent thread.  Your solution may not have
been the most direct, but it worked. :-) There were some
links noted in the other thread which may improve your
aim::

==========
Begin forwarded message:

> From: Andy Griggs <griggs.andy at gmail.com>
> Date: 2011/04/13 18:06:48  ET
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: Re: [ale] my cousin's linux computer and desktop not  
> appearing
> Reply-To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
>
> This is fairly common, I can't remember the exact way that I last
> fixed the issue.  Check the links below...either should work.  Always
> more than one way to do it.
>
> http://netgator.blogspot.com/2010/06/taskbar-missing-in-ubuntu-1004.html
>
> http://www.watchingthenet.com/restore-panels-in-ubuntu-back-to-their-default-settings.html

===========

Begin forwarded message:

> From: arxaaron <arxaaron at gmail.com>
> Date: 2011/04/13 19:40:23  ET
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
> Subject: Re: [ale] my cousin's linux computer and desktop not  
> appearing
> Reply-To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
>
> Hey Narahari!
>
> It looks like you cousin's gnome panel config went south.
>
> If your cousin can follow the instructions here, it will probably fix
> his problem:
>
> <http://netgator.blogspot.com/2010/06/taskbar-missing-in-ubuntu-1004.html
>>
>
> ====
> 1.  Press Alt+F2, in text fild type 'gnome-terminal' (without quotes)
> and click on 'Run'.
>
> 2.  In terminal submit the commands below one by one. Select one
> line at a time and press 'Enter'.
>
> %> gconftool --recursive-unset /apps/panel
> %> rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel
> %> pkill gnome-panel
>
> You can recover Ubuntu machines 'Taskbar". Systems behave normally.
> ====

On 2011/04/23, at 22:32 , Richard Faulkner wrote:

> If anyone is terminally bored or wants to critique my approach to  
> solving this issue (especially anyone who wants to share a BETTER  
> way of resolving this issue -- I'm all ears!)
>
> For the record I am not a CLI junkie (but I'd like to be one of  
> sorts) and although I consider myself comfortable with supporting  
> the distros that I'm familiar with; I am limited as that's more from  
> the GUI than a CLI standpoint.  Enter today's problem....
>
> <PROBLEM>
>
> Last week my wife did an upgrade on her Ubuntu 9.10 box to 10.10  
> without knowing the potential consequences.  Needless to say her  
> Internet box was more than a little "funkified" after the  
> procedure.  As I already had good back-up for the system I opted to  
> blast it and reinstall 9.10 (which runs really good on that machine)  
> and make some improvements while I went.  After completing that work  
> I ran into this little wrinkle today.
>
> After starting the machine (cold boot) the desktop launched but  
> gnome-panel crashed and never launched (no menus or icons).  Having  
> some desktop icons and a mounted external USB drive mounted at least  
> I had some tools.  Knowing that I needed a terminal window I figured  
> I could find an internal path to that application online.  (I only  
> know these features by heart for Window$ and haven't learned them  
> yet for GNU/Linux).  The only problem was that I had no panel with  
> Chrome on it or a Terminal launcher to get there.  Knowing that  
> Chrome saves bookmark back-ups as .HTML files I browsed to the  
> mounted back-up drive and launched a browser process from the Chrome  
> back-up file.  Now I could access the web...  Some quick digging  
> yielded the needed command to restart the panels.  Now all I needed  
> was a way to get to Terminal.
>
> By referring to the properties of the Terminal launcher on my Fedora  
> box I found the commands needed to create a launcher on my wife's  
> Ubuntu desktop.  Now with a desktop launcher for Terminal I could  
> run the command "killall gnome-panel" thus killing and restarting  
> the panels.  Bingo!  I'm back in business...sort of.
>
> A restart showed that the panels were still buggered-up (process  
> died for some reason) so reflecting back on what had been done to  
> them before the machine was shut-down; I recalled that I had added  
> Weather Report to the top panel.  I had added two (one for Atlanta  
> and one for Wellington) and both at the time appeared to be  
> running.  Again I stop and start gnome-panel and once again it  
> launches properly but now I can see that both Weather Reports now  
> MIA.  This leads me to suspect that they were buggered-up as well  
> and perhaps causing (or contributing to) the failure in panels.
>
> With my limited experience in troubleshooting these issues for Linux  
> I decided to try creating a new panel and populate it with new menus  
> and features.  (Out with the old and in with the new).  After this I  
> blew away the old panel, did a "killall gnome-panel" once again;  
> confirmed it restarted and then rebooted to check the results.  It  
> worked and all is back to normal.
>
> </PROBLEM>
>
> I know there must be a better way of doing this.  The question is  
> just "how?"  All I did was use all of the tools that I know for  
> Linux and attack the problem with what I had.  Anyone care to  
> critique?
>
> Thanks and best Easter wishes to all!
>
>
> Rich in Lilburn
>
>
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