[Help] Taskbar & menu not loading (also missing window borders!)

[Sojiro84]

I logged in with the guest account and that one is working fine.

If a guest account works without issues but your main user account doesn't that is typically an issue in the user home folder. That would be why Cosmo asked for the results of

find $HOME ! -user $USER -type f

That should not return results if all permissions in the home folder are correct. If you do get results post them. If not, you probably have a settings issue somewhere in your home folder.

I guess I missed Cosmo asking for that command's results. Thanks for repeating that. I did had a issue a few day's back where all of a sudden I lost the rights to the Downloads directory which I manually fixed in the map's properties by open the file manager as root.

Here are the results of the command:

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find: ‘/home/sojiro/.gvfs’: Toegang geweigerd (translation = access denied)
find: ‘/home/sojiro/.Trash-0’: Toegang geweigerd (translation = access denied)
/home/sojiro/.xscreensaver
find: ‘/home/sojiro/.cache/dconf’: Toegang geweigerd (translation = access denied)
/home/sojiro/.pia_manager/log/openvpn.pid
/home/sojiro/.cinnamon/configs/menu@cinnamon.org/14.json
/home/sojiro/.cinnamon/configs/transparent-panels@germanfr/transparent-panels@germanfr.json
/home/sojiro/.cinnamon/glass.log.last
/home/sojiro/.cinnamon/glass.log
find: ‘/home/sojiro/.steam/steam/steamapps/downloading/304930/Maps/Germany/Foliage/Tile_24_-51.foliage’: Bestand of map bestaat niet (translation = file or folder does not exist)
/home/sojiro/.steam/steam/steamapps/downloading/304930/Maps/Germany/Foliage/Tile_24_-51.foliage
/home/sojiro/.config/autostart/Cinnamon Settings Daemon - xrandr.desktop
/home/sojiro/.config/mimeapps.list

I am seeing some "system" stuff that should not be showing up as you said. Is there a magic command to automatically fix these in-proper rights?

[Sojiro84]

Google told me that the following should fix the rights on the home directory:

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find /home/user -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0775
find /home/user -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0664

Is this true? And why are there 2 lines for it? I know that 0775 and 0664 has to do with the rights but why 2 and not one?

[Sojiro84]

I am manually fixing the rights on the files/folders by comparing a correct folder rights and applying those rights to the other folder that was somehow attached to root.

Same with the files. Going good so far.

[Cosmo.]

Is this true?

No, it will not help.

Do it this way:
Mark the following command completely and make sure, that you do not miss any sign, than press ctrl-c

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find /home/$SUDO_USER ! -user $SUDO_USER -exec chown $SUDO_USER:$SUDO_USER '{}' \;

Open a terminal and enter

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sudo -i

and press the Enter-key; you get prompted for your password, enter it.
Now still in the same terminal press ctrl-shift-V
Run this command and wait until it has finished. It does not produce a readable output.
Press twice ctrl-d
Immediately log off and back into your account.

[Sojiro84]

Well, zero errors now with the command.

Not at home so can't restart my laptop. Did my edits currently with teamviewer. Will report back tonight to see if it now boots as it should!

[Sojiro84]

Is this true?

No, it will not help.

Do it this way:
Mark the following command completely and make sure, that you do not miss any sign, than press ctrl-c

Code: Select all

find /home/$SUDO_USER ! -user $SUDO_USER -exec chown $SUDO_USER:$SUDO_USER '{}' \;

Open a terminal and enter

Code: Select all

sudo -i

and press the Enter-key; you get prompted for your password, enter it.
Now still in the same terminal press ctrl-shift-V
Run this command and wait until it has finished. It does not produce a readable output.
Press twice ctrl-d
Immediately log off and back into your account.

Just read this, will do this if after a reboot it still does not work. This is also going on my Linux document for tips and tricks and solutions to potential errors.

[Sojiro84]

Is this true?

No, it will not help.

Do it this way:
Mark the following command completely and make sure, that you do not miss any sign, than press ctrl-c

Code: Select all

find /home/$SUDO_USER ! -user $SUDO_USER -exec chown $SUDO_USER:$SUDO_USER '{}' \;

Open a terminal and enter

Code: Select all

sudo -i

and press the Enter-key; you get prompted for your password, enter it.
Now still in the same terminal press ctrl-shift-V
Run this command and wait until it has finished. It does not produce a readable output.
Press twice ctrl-d
Immediately log off and back into your account.

My way did not worked and just now did your way. Unfortunately still no luck. Taskbar and start menu does not show up on login. I can get everything back with opening a terminal and do cinnamon --replace though.

What is happening at first login that causes this. So strange. Thanks for all the help so far!

[JosephM]

So if the permissions fixes didn't fix it and it runs in a new user account, your going to have to find the difference. Have you changed any startup applications? Any third part applets, desklets, etc.?

[Cosmo.]

Did you run this and did you now get an empty output?

[Sojiro84]

Did you run this and did you now get an empty output?

The only thing that comes up now is

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/home/sojiro/.pia_manager/log/openvpn.pid

But that one doesnt seem important. It was also fixed earlier today but come back again.

So if the permissions fixes didn't fix it and it runs in a new user account, your going to have to find the difference. Have you changed any startup applications? Any third part applets, desklets, etc.?

Private Internet Access runs at startup, the same as TeamViewer. I got Docky installed and I got the transparency plugin for the taskbar.

All those things are on my gamepc as well and that runs without issues.

Guess I have to dig a bit deeper to see what else runs at start vs my gamepc.

[Cosmo.]

We need (to try) to fid out, where the problem lies.

Do this:
Open the file manager and make hidden files visible (ctrl-h). Now rename in your home the folder .config to .config.bck. Then the same with the folder .local accordingly. Those are the most suspicious places for troublesome settings. After having done that immediately log out and back into your account and check if this helps. Both folders get recreated with default values which can be deleted, if you want to revert the step.

[JosephM]

Private Internet Access runs at startup, the same as TeamViewer. I got Docky installed and I got the transparency plugin for the taskbar.

Have you tried disabling those and seeing if it fixes the problem? Just assuming they aren't because they don't on another machine isn't the best way to troubleshoot this.

[cjpoor4]

I had this problem of the start menu and bar disappearing. I found that right clicking on the desktop and choosing "open in terminal" then doing
$ cinnamon --replace &
fixed the problem.