Re: Lost window manager and gnome-panel
On Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:30:08 -0800
Andrew Sackville-West <andrew@farwestbilliards.com> dijo:
> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 10:31:14AM -0800, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> > couple problems left to resolve. Then I decided to reboot. And then it
> > happened again - no metacity or gnome panel. Only this time I couldn't
> > right-click on the desktop and create a launcher either. I could boot
> > into Recovery Mode, but you can't start an X program from there.
> well clearly you should never reboot ;)
LOL.
> so, what do you get? What does the screen look like? Is it the default
> X gray screen with a mouse cursor and nothing else? Is it some desktop
> backdrop that you set? we need some more information.
I had set the screen to no background image, just a solid color
(off-white). I had deleted the bottom panel. In the top panel I set the
panel to transparent so that it appeared in the same color as the
desktop. And I went into gconf-editor and unchecked the box to display
icons on the desktop. Some of this may be the source of the problem,
but I doubt it. I have run Gnome like this for years on Ubuntu. I like
my screen empty with just the panel at the top.
Having set things up this way, when I log in now I get an utterly blank
off-white screen. I can't verify that metacity is not running because
this time I cannot open any windows - no way to launch anything without
the panel. I'm just assuming that it is not running because last time
it happened I was able to create a launcher on the desktop which
allowed me to open a terminal window. The terminal window was lacking
all the stuff that the window manager creates. And for sure the panel
is not there.
The mouse and keyboard work. But if I hover with the mouse over the
place on the missing panel where the Applications menu is I can click,
but nothing happens. In other words, the panel is not just invisible,
it is completely not there.
> Also, how are you selecting GNOME from the (I assume) GDM login?
Actually I didn't "select" Gnome. The GDM login has the option, but
Gnome is the default, so I just enter my username and password and hit
Enter. The GDM login screen has other options, "Failsafe Gnome," among
others. But none of them got me anything more than a blank screen
without window manager or gnome-panel. Of course, now there is an
option to boot to XFCE4, which is what I am using until I figure out
how to fix Gnome.
> I'm wondering if you're somehow changing the default selection to be a
> .xsession session and consequently getting an empty session.
Now we might be getting somewhere. I am not very familiar with what's
under the hood in Linux. What is an .xsession session?
And bear in mind that all I did was reboot and log in as usual. At the
GDM screen I just entered my username and password and hit Enter. I did
not select any options. If I'm getting an .xsession session it is not
because I deliberately chose an .xsession session. Of course,
*something* caused it to happen. That's what I need to figure out.
I should add that if I deliberately select Gnome for the session I
still get the blank screen sans metacity and gnome-panel.
> > So this long story boils down to two questions:
> >
> > 1) How can I fix Gnome? What part of the configuration starts metacity
> > and gnome-panel when the user logs in? Note that I'll have to do this
> > manually from XFCE, because I can't even get a terminal running in
> > Gnome.
>
> I'm not exactly sure that GNOME is broken. I think perhaps it's
> something simple (like the xsession thing above) and it's getting lost
> in the transmission
> > 2) How the heck did this happen? I did hundreds of things before I
> > rebooted - which thing messed up Gnome? Can someone suggest a way to
> > find out what I did to cause this so I can file a bug report or at
> > least avoid doing it again?
> on the assumption that you've been doing lots of installing, take a
> lot at the aptitude logs and see if there is a clue there. Perhaps
> you've installed something that conflicts with GNOME (can't imagine
> what that might be) or removed something critical.
Looking at the aptitude logs didn't help - no error messages. There are
two logs, both dated Friday, the first at 10:44 am and the second at
10:57 am. The only strange thing is that the second one is clearly the
initial installation (very long, includes apps that are installed by
default like Inkscape and OOo, 1169 total packages), but the first one
is an upgrade for 20 packages. How could there be an upgrade before the
OS was installed? And bear in mind that this was a new installation,
reformatting the hard disk. Very odd.
I also looked at dmesg and at /var/logs/messages, but I didn't see
anything obvious.
I'm off to google on what an .xsession is. Thanks for the clue.
Meantime, I'm all ears for additional suggestions.
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