Eeerrrkkk, my desktop has gone :/

[Desmo]

Just to go one better than Del Lardo....my entire Ubuntu desktop has gone :/
I was adding a skydome to compiz settings when it went a bit funny. My four desktops dropped back to the normal two. I rebooted and now nothing loads up. No menu bars or desktop icons. I can still do stuff manually using Alt+F2 to run firefox, terminal, etc.

Trying to hunt down some info but no joy so far.

[Garp]

Bring up a command line (ctrl+alt+F1), then login. Try the following sequence of commands, if I remember the folder names right:


cd ~
mv .gnome .gnome-backup
mv .gnome2 .gnome2-backup


Then go back to your GUI (ctrl+alt+F7) and press ctrl+alt+backspace. That should restart gnome with its default setup with any joy.

[Desmo]

Good work Garp, it's kind of there. My original panels are there but they seem to be invisible. I should be ab le to make some new ones and delete the old. Will give it a go now.

[Desmo]

Yep, seems to have done the trick. Can you shed any light on what happened?

[Garp]

Yep, seems to have done the trick. Can you shed any light on what happened?

Wish I could, its happened to me once or twice in the past, and a couple of my colleagues at work. It's never happened under Debian which I now use on my workstation. It just seems occasionally something in the gnome preferences for your user ends up getting corrupted and messes up the panels. The only way we've fixed it so far is moving the preference folders and letting things go back to defaults :(

[Desmo]

Grrrr, seems to have done it again. Will try the fix again and see what happens.

[Desmo]

Right, every time I boot in nothing works. If I hit Ctrl+Alt+Backspace it all loads up after I re-login.

[Desmo]

Seems that the first time I log in it plays up. If I Ctrl+Alt+Backspace and log in a second time, it's fine. I can do this short term but will need to try and dig up a solution soon :)

Cheers for you help tonight Garp :)

[Desmo]

OK, I'm up and running :D

After deleting loads of config files and whatnot, I finally found a solution to my second problem. I couldn't enable any of the better compiz settings like the cube. It would just turn off all advanced visual effects. Finally I found a post on Ubuntu forums that said it didn't like the Skydome pic somebody used so the just used something else and it worked fine...I did the same and now I'm back up and running again :D

[Desmo]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v112/piggymon/Computer%20Stuff/bdskydome.jpg

:D

[Daz]

Was gonna say the only time I see oddness like that is when I've been dicking around with compiz. Dont do it often now anyway so I'm alreet :)

Though having said that I've been dicking about with compiz in Hardy for ****s and giggles and it's never bombed me.