17.3 Mate Menu Tray And Desktop Icons Not Loading After Fresh Install And Updates

[aveatquevale]

Hello everyone Been digging into linux for many years, and last summer finally migrated for good with ubuntu 16.04 on my more up to date rig. I have an older pc (specs below) and decided to put it to good use with linux mint, cause why not (plus it just doesn't feel right using win xp anymore). Searched for a fix for my problem a lot, i presume the thing that comes the closest to it are no desktop icons and black screen at boot up. But i just couldn't make sure to try the fixes offered for them since i destroyed my 16.04 last year doing exactly that, and then having to reinstall everything

865G Gigabyte 8IG1000MK FI Mob0
2 x 500mb + 2 x 1gb ddr 400 ram
intel 3.4 Ghz extreme ed. CPU
creative audigy value sound card
nvidia 7800 GS video card
80 gb seagate hdd (yes it still works, even outlasted the samsung which had been bought 3 years later..)

Linux Mint 17.3 Mate 32 bit, installed alongside win xp, on the same hard drive. Windows xp works fine, so i can only assume the problem is not hardware related. 17.3 has been allocated a space of 29.2 gigs in total.

So, to the problem:

Did the install and it went smooth, restarted as prompted, tried a bit of stuff (web surfing, editing some documents - generally making sure everything is working fine). Even found out that mobile data tethering from my phone works plug and play right out of the box without hassle (over the moon at this point) - which it didn't on 16.04 on my other pc for some reason. Second boot - got past everything, and then... gobsmacked. Mouse icon (in forever busy mode, spinning, but i can still click with it, to do... stuff. you know..) shows up , desktop background shows up, welcome screen shows up, nothing else. Reboot a couple of times; no luck. After a little bit of fiddling i found out that by using the choices on the welcome screen (new features, documentation, drivers etc.), i can use firefox, change drivers etc. If i plug my phone for mobile data sharing, the network notifications will show up in the upper right hand corner as usual. If I wait a couple of minutes, the PC will go to screen saver and come back when i poke it as expected. So everything looks to be working other than the menu tray and desktop icons, which are sorely missed since i need them lol Changed video driver to nvidia 304, seen below at the second pic. Tried nouveau (xorg) as well. The third option gave an error when i tried selecting it. Since I was able to change between video drivers and reboot a couple of times, I thought maybe, just maybe it's something to do with the desktop & window manager.

http://imgur.com/a/WXaB4 forever busy spin; with the welcome screen behind, no menu try at the bottom and no desktop icons.

http://imgur.com/a/E5PUa driver configuration screen, after i chose nvidia 304 and rebooted.


TL, DR:

Mouse icon in forever busy spin(still can use it),
No menu tray and no desktop icons
Everything else seem to be working fine.

Any help is much, much appreciated.

[Pierre]

there is nothing wrong with using that 80Gb HDD,
- it's faster than the older 40Gb HDDs ( 7600rpm against 5400 rpm )
I've still got one machine that has a similar setup, with win-xp // LM17x on it.

so, keep using that nvidia 304 driver, for the moment, at least.

since your using the Mate Desktop, goto Favourites - System Monitor
& run that - - watch what is happening with the CPU & Memory - - is either of them Maxing out?
- try watching a YouTube video to see if that does Max out anything. ..

then, under processes - - check those values, as well.

then screen_saver time-out is adjusted by Control Center - Look & Feel - Screen_saver:
- it's default of 5Min is too low, change that to say, 15min

[Monsta]

Tough situation. Without mate-panel running, there's no mintMenu and no Alt-F2 dialog to launch any apps...
Can you check if right-click menu on the desktop works at least? You can run mate-terminal from there.

[aveatquevale]

First of all thanks a lot for taking the time to reply.

Three important points i forgot to mention in my original post were:

1- The only means of gui interaction with the system at this moment is the welcome screen (Edit !: this is a lie. I now also have the gui terminal working). Had I unmarked the "show this dialog at startup", it would not be possible as well. ctrl+alt+F1 works; when i run the startx command we're back to square one tho. But the bottom line is I can change stuff from the ctrl+alt+F1 command prompt if need be. I'm so far playing good guy greg and using the shutdown -h now command to turn off the pc.

since your using the Mate Desktop, goto Favourites - System Monitor
& run that - - watch what is happening with the CPU & Memory - - is either of them Maxing out?
- try watching a YouTube video to see if that does Max out anything. ..

then, under processes - - check those values, as well.

No can do. The only means of interaction is the welcome screen and the ctrl+alt+F1 command prompt. Being a smart guy, I tried running the mate-system-monitor command in the command prompt, but it turns out i'm not so smart after all - since this was the output: Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display. Tried installing gnome system monitor and then ran it by gnome-system-monitor, same output.

Edit !: Being an idiot I only just now recalled that the terminal shortcut under the gui desktop is ctrl+alt+t. And it works. So I suppose now we have a fully functioning gui terminal at our disposal, since running the mate-system-monitor command started it in gui form. I can confirm that usage for both CPU1 and CPU 2(virtual core?) are unsually high in the high sixties or seventies with only the system monitor running (this definitely wasn't the case after my first reboot - the one after the installation ended), and visiting youtube on firefox (only visiting, didn't watch anything) results with %100 load on both cores. Checked the processes; Firefox is 25-30 ish, and web content is 80-90 ish (went over 100 at one point lol). Web content is only running when firefox is running so I'm assuming it's not the cause of the problem. So if you were of the opinion that something somehow is hogging cpu usage, we might be on the right path. While running the mate-system-monitor command from the terminal I get this message too: "WARNING **:SELinux was found but is not enabled"

One thing that's worth noting is that when only the system monitor is running, CPU loads are unusually high in the high sixties or seventies BUT nothing under the processes tab adds up to that much. Usage I can see in the processes tab is as follows:

mate-system-monitor: 10 20 or 30
dbus-daemon: 4 (constant)
mate-session: 4 or 2
gvfsd-trash: 0 or 2
marco: 2

Everything else is at 0.

2- After my first boot, i did all the updates from the update center. Honestly, that's the only thing that changed between my first boot and second boot (when the problem reared it's ugly head). I didn't even fiddle with settings, or change anything else (ok I lied, I changed the screen saver ). If nothing helps, does anyone think that rolling back all of those updates would be possible ?

3- Some green dots in the middle of the screen started appearing while booting up; I suppose after I changed into nvidia 304 driver (IIRC). I also get an error in green that reads, "mpu 401 device not found or busy". And also, orange dots when I'm turning off the pc with the shutdown -h now command in the command prompt. And also, the fonts in ctrl+alt+F1 command prompt look big, unwieldy and ugly

Tough situation. Without mate-panel running, there's no mintMenu and no Alt-F2 dialog to launch any apps...
Can you check if right-click menu on the desktop works at least? You can run mate-terminal from there.

Right-click: No go. Alt-F2: No go. Mate terminal works thanks to ctrl+alt+T tho.

TL, DR

- Can get to the terminal by using ctrl+alt+T
- Can run mate-system-monitor command, system monitor shows in gui format
- Unusually high CPU usage, with no apparent culprit under the processes tab, with only the system monitor itself running

[Monsta]

Oh right. I didn't think that when Caja doesn't handle the desktop, no right-click menu is available too...

Ok, so Marco (window manager) is running, providing you with Ctrl-Alt-T shortcut. That's good. Now you can do some things in the terminal.
First, let's assume it's Caja which is constantly crashing and auto-restarting, and try to stop it:

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killall -9 caja

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ps aux | grep caja

If the second command still shows "caja" in the processes, repeat the first one until it says there's no such process.
This should lower CPU usage.

Next, let's check some settings. Run these commands and post the output here:

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gsettings get org.mate.background show-desktop-icons

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gsettings get org.mate.caja.preferences exit-with-last-window

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gsettings get org.mate.caja.extensions disabled-extensions

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ls -l /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/caja/extensions-2.0

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ls -l /usr/share/caja/extensions

Just in case, also check the ownership of dconf files:

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ls -l ~/.cache/dconf/user

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ls -l /run/user/1000/dconf/user

Both should be owned by you, not by root or anyone else.
If any of them doesn't exist, it's ok too.

[aveatquevale]

Aye Sir ! Let met get to work. I'll report back with my findings asap

[aveatquevale]

Oh right. I didn't think that when Caja doesn't handle the desktop, no right-click menu is available too...

Ok, so Marco (window manager) is running, providing you with Ctrl-Alt-T shortcut. That's good. Now you can do some things in the terminal.
First, let's assume it's Caja which is constantly crashing and auto-restarting, and try to stop it:

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killall -9 caja

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ps aux | grep caja

If the second command still shows "caja" in the processes, repeat the first one until it says there's no such process.
This should lower CPU usage.

I had to repeat the first one around 5 times until got "caja: no process found". You were right about CPU usage. It dropped right down to around 5-10 on both CPU's, and now it looks consistent with the percentage total of firefox + mate system monitor under the processes tab.

Next, let's check some settings. Run these commands and post the output here:

Consider it done sir !

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gsettings get org.mate.background show-desktop-icons

Output is: "true"

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gsettings get org.mate.caja.preferences exit-with-last-window

Output is: "false"

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gsettings get org.mate.caja.extensions disabled-extensions

Output is: "@as []"

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ls -l /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/caja/extensions-2.0

Output is:

"total 88
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13936 Mar 9 2016 libatril-properties-page.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13816 Nov 4 2015 libcaja-engrampa.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9732 Nov 4 2015 libcaja-gksu.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18040 Nov 4 2015 libcaja-open-terminal.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 22172 Nov 12 2014 libcaja-python.so"

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ls -l /usr/share/caja/extensions

Output is:

"total 20
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4013 Mar 9 2016 libatril-properties-page.caja-extension
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4641 Nov 4 2015 libcaja-engrampa.caja-extension
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2566 Nov 4 2015 libcaja-gksu.caja-extension
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3243 Nov 4 2015 libcaja-open-terminal.caja-extension"

Just in case, also check the ownership of dconf files:

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ls -l ~/.cache/dconf/user

Output is: "ls: cannot access /home/mustafa/.cache/dconf/user: No such file or directory"

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ls -l /run/user/1000/dconf/user

Output is: "-rw------- 1 mustafa mustafa 2 Jun 16 16:52 /run/user/1000/dconf/user"

Both should be owned by you, not by root or anyone else.
If any of them doesn't exist, it's ok too.

After running all the commands I've noticed that the forever spinning busy mouse icon is gone. It's back to normal now. 1 down, 2 to go I guess ?

Thank you so much for your help by the way!

[Monsta]

All looks good, so it's still unknown why Caja keeps crashing...

Ok, check if you can launch caja-file-management-properties app. If it runs fine, try disabling various extensions there (in the last tab), and see if Caja still crashes without them.

Since Caja isn't running (after killall -9), it can be started right from the terminal (just run "caja"). If it doesn't crash, it should open a new window with your home folder. It also probably won't exit after closing the window - then you'll need to press Ctrl-C in the terminal to make it quit.

[aveatquevale]

Hello,

When I try to run the caja-file-management-properties command from the terminal, this is the output:

" ** Message: Initializing gksu extension...
Initializing caja-open-terminal extension
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/overrides/Gtk.py:50: RuntimeWarning: You have imported the Gtk 2.0 module. Because Gtk 2.0 was not designed for use with introspection some of the interfaces and API will fail. As such this is not supported by the pygobject development team and we encourage you to port your app to Gtk 3 or greater. PyGTK is the recomended python module to use with Gtk 2.0
warnings.warn(warn_msg, RuntimeWarning)
Segmentation fault "

And when I try to run the caja command from the terminal, this is the output:

" Segmentation fault "

[Monsta]

Ok, let's try disabling all the installed extensions via command line tool:

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gsettings set org.mate.caja.extensions disabled-extensions "['libatril-properties-page', 'libcaja-engrampa', 'libcaja-gksu', 'libcaja-open-terminal', 'libcaja-python']"

Then check if caja-file-management-properties starts this time. If it does, you can try re-enabling extensions one by one, running the app again, etc. Hopefully we can find out which extension causes the problem.

[aveatquevale]

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gsettings set org.mate.caja.extensions disabled-extensions "['libatril-properties-page', 'libcaja-engrampa', 'libcaja-gksu', 'libcaja-open-terminal', 'libcaja-python']"

I'm a tad confused. I ran the command above, there was no output.

Then check if caja-file-management-properties starts this time.

It didn't start. I get this output:

" ** Message: Initializing gksu extension...
Initializing caja-open-terminal extension
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/overrides/Gtk.py:50: RuntimeWarning: You have imported the Gtk 2.0 module. Because Gtk 2.0 was not designed for use with introspection some of the interfaces and API will fail. As such this is not supported by the pygobject development team and we encourage you to port your app to Gtk 3 or greater. PyGTK is the recomended python module to use with Gtk 2.0
warnings.warn(warn_msg, RuntimeWarning)
Segmentation fault "

[Monsta]

It's ok, the command to set gsettings keys has no output if it completes successfully.

Not sure why caja-file-management-properties still tries to init the disabled extensions.
Does caja itself start, or also segfaults?

[aveatquevale]

Output of caja ( I just typed caja into the terminal and then hit enter):

" Segmentation fault "

Output of sudo caja:

" ** Message: Initializing gksu extension...
Initializing caja-open-terminal extension
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/overrides/Gtk.py:50: RuntimeWarning: You have imported the Gtk 2.0 module. Because Gtk 2.0 was not designed for use with introspection some of the interfaces and API will fail. As such this is not supported by the pygobject development team and we encourage you to port your app to Gtk 3 or greater. PyGTK is the recomended python module to use with Gtk 2.0
warnings.warn(warn_msg, RuntimeWarning) "

Output of gksu caja(after a gui password prompt):

" Initializing caja-open-terminal extension
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/overrides/Gtk.py:50: RuntimeWarning: You have imported the Gtk 2.0 module. Because Gtk 2.0 was not designed for use with introspection some of the interfaces and API will fail. As such this is not supported by the pygobject development team and we encourage you to port your app to Gtk 3 or greater. PyGTK is the recomended python module to use with Gtk 2.0
warnings.warn(warn_msg, RuntimeWarning) "

[Monsta]

Oh. So it starts as root?

[aveatquevale]

I don't know. Does it ?

So the kilall -9 caja command instantly yields an output of " caja: no process found ". It means it did not start ?

[Monsta]

Well, at least it doesn't segfault as root
Doesn't it show any windows?

[aveatquevale]

Doesn't it show any windows?

Unfortunately no

The only window i got was for a password prompt after gksu caja. I enter my pass, hit enter, I get the output in the message above. No windows show up, and I pulled all the other open windows to the side to see whether something popped up under them, but no..

[Monsta]

Weird...
One more thing I would try is to create a new user, then log in as that user from the login screen, and check if the caja and panel problems happen for that user too.

[aveatquevale]

Ok, I'll try that (if i can hack it) and report back.

[aveatquevale]

So I used the sudo adduser test command to create a user named test. Then used ctrl+alt+F2 for command prompt and logged into the user account of test. Used startx command for gui. ctrl+alt+T for terminal and retried everything offered in this topic top to bottom and pretty much the same results, except for;

ls -l /run/user/1000/dconf/user

Output: " ls: cannot access /run/user/1000/dconf/user: Permission denied "

Everything else is the same i think

(Reinstall with xfce ? )