Menu and taskbar disappeared

[Dan-cer]

This morning on my main computer (with Cinnamon 20.3, see signature) I no longer see a taskbar.
The menu can not be opened, nor any programs.
Only the browser is active (because of autostart). I already tried to do a restore in recovery-mode using timeshift, but that didn't help. Even a

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apt-get install --reinstall cinnamon

did not bring anything except an error message. What is the easiest way to fix this now?

I can't do anything on desktop. Even 'Strg+ALT+T' to open a terminal. Rightclick on desktop doesn't work. I could create a live-usb-stick on my other PC and boot it on main PC.
Or I could do the right command in root terminal (recovery mode). However, what would be the right command to solve it?

Update:
In this case my "solution" was to re-install Linux Mint. That was not really a solution because in most cases there are other ways to solve an issue like that. However, I didn't find it.

[deepakdeshp]

Please see
viewtopic.php?t=260808

[Dan-cer]

I'm not sure if cinnamon needs to be restored, or if it's reinstalling the more recent kernel.
Maybe both?

[Moem]

You seem to be missing your panel. (Taskbar is a Windows term.) The menu is an applet on that panel, so of course that is gone too.
The solution for that, as given by Smurphos, is:

Open a terminal with Ctrl-Alt-T and run the command below to reset the enabled panels to default

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dconf reset /org/cinnamon/panels-enabled

But of course, that assumes you can open a terminal.

Do you have any recent Timeshift snapshots you can restore from?

[Geoff_P]

Try the 'Windows' key on the keyboard. That shows the menu.

[Dan-cer]

But of course, that assumes you can open a terminal.
Do you have any recent Timeshift snapshots you can restore from?

I can't open a terminal, even not with ctrl+ALT+T.
Yes, I have 5 snapshots and I tried them already - and failed.
At the moment I am on a new created Live-USB, trying to figure out if it is only about re-installing panel + menu, or also new kernel.

[Dan-cer]

Try the 'Windows' key on the keyboard. That shows the menu.

Doesn't work. No single shortcut does work, except shortcuts for the browser.

If I could add gnome-terminal to autostart via recovery console (root) that would help to do new installations with terminal.

[Moem]

Even a

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apt-get install --reinstall cinnamon

did not bring anything except an error message.

What was the error message?

[Dan-cer]

I would have to do it again to get the exact wording.
EDIT:
But "cinnamon" isn't the right name of the package.
When I tried to do a snapshot restore I got something like "try 'apt-get update' or add ' --fix missing'.

[Cosmo.]

Open a terminal with Ctrl-Alt-T and run the command below to reset the enabled panels to default

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dconf reset /org/cinnamon/panels-enabled

Open a virtual console (ctrl-alt-F1) and enter the command.

BTW: I doubt, that this is a system problem, but merely an account problem.

[Dan-cer]

BTW: I doubt, that this is a system problem, but merely an account problem.

You are 100% right!
I had deleted some files yesterday without realizing that I was going to wreck my system.
They were "duplicate" *.desktop files and unchecked menu entries.
I SHOULD RATHER NOT HAVE DONE THAT!
Anyway, it was an account problem. Since I had no other account, I copied the /home directory to the backup and reinstalled Mint (20.3 again).
I didn't want to wait to see if there was a solution to fix /home, as I initially assumed the system partition was broken. But the reinstallation gave the same panel- and menu-free view... So I formated /home too and copied the data later.
If there are - after the fact - any ideas for a solution, please let me know. It might be of interest for future readers.

[Cosmo.]

You did not try my advice? That is a pity.

Another way would have been, to create a new user account in the virtual console (sudo adduser {username} sudo), then you could have copied the deleted files over or you would perhaps had been able to copy them back from the trash bin of the original account. But nothing of this would have brought back your panel. This to answer your last sentence.

This was for sure not the cause of your problem:

They were "duplicate" *.desktop files and unchecked menu entries.

This does not delete a panel. Used panels get defined in dconf in the value /org/cinnamon/panels-enabled. And this was at the point the object of my previous advice.

[Dan-cer]

You did not try my advice? That is a pity.

I did that before you wrote it. But I couldn't open virtual console. No key was functioning.

[motoryzen]

Dan-cer

you can also ( if the keyboard default shortcut for it has not been messed up) do alt +f2

then type

gnome-terminal

then press enter to launch it

and that should launch the terminal also ..allowing you to follow cosmo's advice if it's still applicable. I'm jumping all over this domain back and forth among many topics. sorry if I missed anything.

[Dan-cer]

Dan-cer
you can also ( if the keyboard default shortcut for it has not been messed up) do alt +f2
then type
gnome-terminal
then press enter to launch it

Thank you for your advice. Maybe next time. You probably missed that I have already re-installed LM 20.3 to solve the issue.

However, I doubt that typing `gnome-terminal` would work in the described case. Why?
Because I could only do anything WITHIN the browser that was auto-started. Typing 'gnome-terminal' would not open a terminal.
There was a horizontal space above the browser, I could see desktop background. When I moved the mouse to this space, the arrow changed to 'X'. There was no connection to the desktop possible.

[Termy]

[...]

I'd be surprised if deleting any '.desktop' files would cause problems like what you had, especially if they're just ones in your HOME, but maybe it's something specific to Cinnamon or traditional DEs. If Cinnamon is unnecessarily using those files to launch stuff behind the scenes at login (for the session, presumably), I'd expect that to be an oversight, for this very reason. Did you delete other system-wide (not in '~/') stuff?

At least you have a working system now — right?

[Dan-cer]

Did you delete other system-wide (not in '~/') stuff?
At least you have a working system now — right?

Yes, the system is fine now. Regarding your first question: I deleted *.desktop files in /usr/share/applications that seemed "duplicated" to me.
And I did something similar in the main menu: >right-click on the menu icon >Setup >Menu >Open Menu Edit. In the various categories I deleted items that seemed "duplicated".

I specifically say they "seemed duplicate". For example, the program 'Okular' had about 8 - 10 different entries.

Resumé: One should not make such deletions.

[Termy]

[...]

Oh wow, 8 different '.desktop' files for one application is usually wholly unnecessary, and might've been a bug from updates not replacing the original file. You had the right idea, TBH. I would've done the same thing and expected nothing to go wrong. Cinnamon maybe has a specific process involving those files, for some reason. Actually, I have a Cinnamon virtual machine, so I'm gonna go quickly try that...

I deleted the entire '/usr/share/applications' directory. After relogging, I got an error dialog saying it failed to load the Cinnamon session, so I guess it's something specific to how Cinnamon is setup (the aforementioned oversight), or it's something tied to how traditional DEs work. Don't worry, I have a backup.

Unfortunately, I can't think of a simple way to get back the '.desktop' files. The only thing which comes to mind is for someone to write a script to go through all of the packages for '.desktop' files in order to redownload and install just those files, but that doesn't account for one installed by other means. Hopefully Cinnamon can address this, because it's definitely a problem, if just one program or user does some such thing with such a file.

Something like the following could be involved, to grab a list of all of the '.desktop' files which should've been installed.

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for PKG in `dpkg -l | grep '^ii' | cut -d ' ' -f 3`; { dpkg -L "$PKG"; } | grep '^/usr/share/applications/'

Then you could determine from what packages those files are installed, use apt-get(8)'s --print-uris flag to grab the URLs — oh you know what, the whole thing is way too convoluted for this message. Point is, there is a way, but it's not a 3 second task.