Lost Unity

[David Shochat]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 2:46 PM, Jim Byrnes <jf_byrnes at comcast.net> wrote:
> I have 11.10 installed in VirtualBox (on 10.04) and it had been working
> well.  Today I installed the Compiz settings manager.  I then started going
> through all the settings just to see what was available.  The only thing I
> knowingly changed was the width of the launcher. I set the slider to its
> minimum.
>
> At some time while I was paging through the various settings the launcher
> disappeared. I just thought that it was hidden, but after closing the
> setting manage I could not get it to reappear.  In fact my desktop is
> displaying nothing except its background and and a grey menu bar at the top
> with File Edit View Go Bookmarks Help on it. The menu items work and
> right-clicking on the desktop shows up the normal popup. If I start typing a
> text box opens in the lower right hand corner but hitting enter just closes
> the window.  The esc and windows keys do nothing.
>
> Any idea on how to get a working desktop back, short of reinstalling?
>
I've seen someone else on this list suggesting a command like "unity
-reset". Have you tried that? You'll have to get a shell prompt of
course. Did you try right mousing on your blank desktop to see if you
could bring up a terminal?

I had exactly the same thing happen to me shortly after upgrading to
11.10. Fortunately, this was in an admin account used only for doing
software updates, etc. So I somehow managed to use this account to
give admin status to another account. Then using that other account, I
deleted the entire contents of the home directory of the account where
the problem had occurred. Yes, that's extreme, but quick and there was
nothing important in that home directory. I've done similar things
before where there were things I did not want to lose. In that case, I
renamed the home directory itself, created a new one with the right
name and ownership and then later moved the important files from the
old home directory to the new one. When I logged into the account
which now had the empty home directory, everything got reinitialized
properly with the launcher back again. I hope they get this
"disappearing Unity" bug fixed. I now see I'm not the only one who was
bitten by it.
-- David