unity error in a 16.04 LTS installation

[Stathis G. Arapostathis]

Hello,

  I faced today a strange issue regarding my unity desktop app.
In particular, the launcher and the side bar along with the top bar that
displays  time etc and all of the buttons such as minimize, maximize etc
vanished!

  I tried to reinstall unity by typing the following command:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall unity

and

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop without any success.

Moreover I read in a thread somewhere that the side-bar plugin may have
been disabled. However when trying to load  ccsm I am receiving the
following error:

*ImportError: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libharfbuzz.so.0: undefined symbol:
FT_Reference_Face*

I am very happy with ubuntu and really want to fix it.

Any ideas on what could I do to restore unity?

PS: I do not know if that helps but when this problem appeared I was trying
to compile mapserver.  A dependency called SVGCAIRO needed to be installed.
As I haven't found that dependency in the repositories, I downloaded a
cabal set of files. I installed cabal package and ran the command cabal
install. Afterwards I rebooted and my unity desktop environment appeared as
I describe above.

Thank you,
Stathis
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