(RE)SOLVED Mate-panel crashes OS even after Mint reinstall

[jaderiver]

Please, can somebody tell me what kind of script or problem could be stuck in my /home folder (and its location) that is related to mate-panel likely crashing my computer? I cannot boot up successfully, unless I remove the mate panel (i.e. /usr/bin/mate-panel) I am at my wit's end, after dozens of isolated file removal steps with the live DVD and rebooting dozens of times, as well as executing a complete Mint install. I really want to preserve my /home folder (or partition) if possible, where I believe the problem lies.

BACKGROUND

I use two mate-panels at the same time - one on the lefthand side of my desktop, one on the right. Occasionally I will move both panels over to the same side and they will coexist side by side. Two nights ago, I moved the left mate-panel to be next to the right and this time it seemed to sit below the other one. Then the computer froze. The CPU began running at 98% and computer temperatures ran high. I shutdown and rebooted a few times... same results after rebooting.

Four years ago, I solved mate-panel issues, while using Maya MATE, by removing the following hidden files from my /home folder (i.e. renaming):

.mateconf
.mateconf.d
.config/mate
.config/mate-session

This solution and these files no longer exist! (Now I use Rebecca 17.1 MATE)

--------------------------------------------

After spending a couple of days researching mate-panel issues I have tried many things, which have not fixed the problem:

1) In terminal: mate-panel --reset
apt-get install mate-panel

2) Working from a live Rebecca DVD I have tried the following, each step in isolation:

Removed the following files... and when no results, ultimately replacing:

a) /usr/bin/mate-panel (At least this removal lets me boot up, but without any mate-panel or mintmenu to use. I'm doing this right now.)

b) /usr/bin/mate-panel-compiz-restart (removed by itself or with both /usr/bin/mate-panel-screenshot and /usr/bin/mate-panel-test-applets at the same time.)

c) home/.config/mate/panel2.d/default/launchers (I removed the panel2.d folder; if /usr/bin/mate-panel is still in the system, the computer boots up, but still just churns and churns although less hot. I tried to find a fresh file from the live DVD to replace this file in my home folder, but no success after a lot of searching.)

3) I finally did a complete reinstall of Mint Rebecca OS and thought for sure mate-panel would finally rebirth and work. Total failure. The computer continues to boot up through the sign-in process, but once it hits the desktop, mate-panel shows up on the right, but visually the panel is "wavy" and unstable, and the sensors on it still show the CPU running at 98% and disc use jumping between 10% and 85% constantly. NO icons on my desktop.

While on the icon-empty, hot desktop environment, I went to the shell prompt (alt-F1/F2) and tried the various the terminal commands above, and also:

a) mateconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/panel (I was told .mateconf does not exist.)
b) rm -rf home/.mateconf/apps/panel (also told .mateconf does not exist)
c) pkill mate-panel (This command did kill and remove the panel, but desktop still stuck with no icons and CPU still running hot and at 98%.

Reinstalling Mint/Rebecca and reformatting the Mint related files and partitions - "/" and "/boot" and "/swap" - did NOT solve the problem So, it seems the problem is in my /home partition.

Please, any suggestions or insight related to current mate-panel issues on Rebecca MATE would be much appreciated.

Thank you for your time and attention.

[jaderiver]

@xakira @xenopeek Since preserving my /home folder content was crucial to me, I found a nice solution in the forums to reinstall Mint and boot up Mint successfully (through the log-in process), at the same time preserving /home content, without going through a time-consuming backup process first. Using the live Rebecca 17.1 DVD, I used administrative privileges to rename the /home/myname folder to /home/myname-zzz and created another /home/myname folder for the reinstallation (both folders existing in the same partition). So, a fresh Mint OS was installed with new uncorrupted configuration files going into the new /home/myname folder. I will move data folders from /home/myname-zzz to the newly created /home/myname folder, while gradually leaving behind corrupt config files.

For this idea, I am extremely grateful to xakira, who explained the process of using this method of preserving /home data when reinstalling a fresh Mint OS.
Xakira's forum entry can be found on page two of xenopeek's excellent tutorial thread "How to install with manual partitioning".

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=122276&start=20

So, this entry is marked as (RE)SOLVED, because I never figured what aspect of mate-panel or ...?... was corrupting my /home/myname folder, but found a workaround to reinstall without destroying personal data files.

Thank you so much, Xakira!

jaderiver

[xakira]

Thanks for the feedback JadeRiver - you put a big smile on my face
I think it's the only way to do a reinstall or clean upgrade to new version