Lost Unity

[Jim Byrnes]

On 10/21/2011 02:06 PM, David Shochat wrote:
> 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
>

Hi David,

unity --reset did not work, see my other message for the list of errors. 
Since this is a test install in VBox with nothing important in it if I 
can't easily fix it I will do the reinstall.  Just trying to find an 
easy way to fix it if it happens in the future with something that matters.

Thanks,  Jim