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

[Dow Hurst]

After upgrading between versions, I have found creating a new user,
configuring that the way I like and then switching myself over to that
account solves a lot of niggly problems.  Working through all the crap that
happens buried down in Gnome or KDE when an old set of config files is being
read by the a new version of KDE or Gnome is just not worth it to me.  I've
also found that when using a NFS file server to serve up home directories to
many people and also mixing in different distros from different client
machines makes for a real headache with home directory config files.  A nice
solution is to have different home directories for each user/distro
combination and a symbolic link to a separate directory where their working
files are stored permanently.

So if I run Ubuntu 8.04, 10.04 and Centos 5 I would have for my user:

/home/dphurst  (where my main work files exist)
/home/ubuntu/10.04/dphurst
/home/ubuntu/8.04/dphurst
/home/centos/5/dphurst

each home directory works great with the distro it is designed for.  A
~/data symbolic link points to /home/dphurst from each of the separate home
directories so I have the same relative path into my work files for ease
with scp or rsync.

Best wishes,
Dow
________________________________________________
Dow Hurst, Research Scientist
340 Sullivan Science Bldg., Dept. of Chem. and Biochem.
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
PO Box 26170 Greensboro, NC 27402-6170




On Sat, Apr 23, 2011 at 10:32 PM, Richard Faulkner <rfaulkner at 34thprs.org>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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