My panel keeps disappearing.

[EdB]

New install Mint19 Xfce. New as in two days old.

Several times now, I have lost my panel. It either just goes away, or else does not appear when I restart. I have moved the mouse around, tried various tricks that I can think of but get no response. It is just flat-out not there. All the other desktop icons are still there and are available.

So I do all that I know to do, which is CtlAltDel to log out then reboot, and when the system comes back up, the panel is there. So far. But needless to say, I do not feel secure.

Why? What is causing this? Is there a command I can invoke from the terminal to reset the desktop or something?

(I hope it is okay to cross-post this to the noob forum)

Ed

[xenopeek]

Have you customized the panel, like added any applets or configured things like auto-hide?

xfce4-panel -r will restart a running panel instance. You might try that next time it happens.

When it happens you could try running grep xfce4-panel ~/.xsession-errors to see if it logged any errors.

[EdB]

I have added a few things - a couple of things from "Add new items" along with "Add to Panel" for some of the apps, plus moving a few things around. But nothing fancy, no auto-hide, resizeing, repositioning, etc.

The grep command you suggest did not give any results.

Thanks for the command to restart the panel. I will try that next time this happens (assuming it will happen).

[MrEen]

Is it possible it keeps disappearing because you're in fullscreen mode? F11 should get you back to normal if that's the case.

[EdB]

Is it possible it keeps disappearing because you're in fullscreen mode? F11 should get you back to normal if that's the case.

Fullscreen? Not to my knowledge. This is the first I have heard of this. What does it do (since I assume fullscreen is the default)?

[EDIT] Okay, I see. If a window if full-screen, you can toggle the panel with F11. So no, I do not think that is happening here, because nothing is in full screen. I'll keep it in mind though. Thanks.

[MtnDewManiac]

Is it possible it keeps disappearing because you're in fullscreen mode? F11 should get you back to normal if that's the case.

Fullscreen? Not to my knowledge. This is the first I have heard of this. What does it do (since I assume fullscreen is the default)?

[EDIT] Okay, I see. If a window if full-screen, you can toggle the panel with F11. So no, I do not think that is happening here, because nothing is in full screen. I'll keep it in mind though. Thanks.

I wouldn't think that'd be a factor if you cannot even see your panel on the desktop, itself (no applications running or, if so, all of them are minimized).

By the way, is it only one panel disappearing? How many do you have? If only the one, try adding a second (even if only temporarily) to see if, when you encounter the issue again, it is still just the one panel that's being affected or all of them.

Regards,
MDM

[EdB]

By the way, is it only one panel disappearing? How many do you have? If only the one, try adding a second (even if only temporarily) to see if, when you encounter the issue again, it is still just the one panel that's being affected or all of them.

Regards,
MDM

Thanks. I have created another on with just a DateTime on it and will see how it behaves. I am still seeing the primary panel disappearing sometimes, but having the panel launcher on the desktop now, it is basically just a nuisance. The launcher creates the missing panel, but the icons do not get arranged properly unless I log off and then log back on.

Another strange issue is that, when the panel does not get created and I open up desktop launchers, the launchers (i.e., Thunar, terminal, etc) always open up in the upper left corner and do not have any buttons visible for closing or resizing. That is why I have to log off and back on to get my desktop back.

[UPDATE] Well, I just tested a reboot, and both panels were gone. I activated the panel launcher and both returned. And as before, I had to log off and back on to get my icons back arranged as before.

Ed

[MrEen]

My uneducated guess is something is up with the Window Manager when this is happening. Did you install a different WM to replace Xfwm4?

[EdB]

My uneducated guess is something is up with the Window Manager when this is happening. Did you install a different WM to replace Xfwm4?

I have my Window Manager set as Metacity + Compositing, Style Clearlooks, Icons Humanity-Dark, I think those are all pretty benign selections.

Ed

[MrEen]

Well, one change I made to my Xfce right after install was to go to Menu > Settings > Desktop Settings and change the drop down to just Xfwm4

I honestly don't know if that will make any difference in your case or not.

I got that info from forum member Pjotr's site here: https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... ts-in-Xfce