14

Was sitting here working on the computer when the power restarted for some reason. When my computer rebooted and I signed back in my top and side panel are missing. All the rest of my desktop seems to be there. I opened a terminal and entered the command:

xfce4-panel

I got the message:

xfce4-panel: there is already and instance running

yet neither of my panels are showing up. I have tried logging out and logging back in several times and still no panel. I'm running Xubuntu 12.04 64-bit.

Kulfy
  • 17,416
  • 26
  • 64
  • 103
Jason Smith
  • 539
  • 3
  • 7
  • 18
  • Try these once.. `sudo dpkg-reconfigure xfce4-panel` If it doesn't help then try to re-install it by: `sudo apt-get -f install --reinstall xfce4-panel`. Logoff and log-in and see what happens.. Reply.. – Saurav Kumar Oct 15 '13 at 20:36
  • First command did nothing. Ran the second command, logged off, logged in. Now my panels are showing but my desktop isn't. – Jason Smith Oct 15 '13 at 21:07
  • 1
    What do you mean by your desktop? Run these commands once and restart your system. 1.`sudo dpkg-reconfigure $(sudo dpkg -l | grep xfce | awk '{print $2}' | tr '\n' ' ')` 2. `sudo update-initramfs -u` – Saurav Kumar Oct 15 '13 at 21:13
  • All the folders, files, icons on my desktop are gone. All that is showing is the default screen from the login session. – Jason Smith Oct 15 '13 at 21:19
  • are you able to open the terminal using ctrl+alt+t. If still not then you can switch to `tty1` CLI mode any time by pressing ctrl+alt+F1. Then you can execute commands that I've mentioned. You can also logout any time you want by : `sudo pkill -u smith` if `smith` is your user name.. Reply.. – Saurav Kumar Oct 15 '13 at 21:22
  • Saurav: your second set of commands seem to have done the trick. Everything seems to be working now except for one file that was open when the outage happened and now when I try to go back into it is says it is opened by an unknown user and I cannot access the file. – Jason Smith Oct 15 '13 at 21:29
  • I'm not able to configure for which file you are talking about.. If that is not that much important then you can ignore it. Hope later it would be fixed by itself after one or two restarts. ;) Since your issued is solved I would like to post it as answer and want from you to mark it as solved. It would help others to get through their problems and also comments can be easily deleted later.. After my answer just review it once and edit if left something.. – Saurav Kumar Oct 15 '13 at 21:37

5 Answers5

14

I had this problem after I changed graphics drivers. My solution was:

  1. Press Alt+F2.

  2. Type xfce4-panel --preferences and press Return. This brings up the panel preferences.

  3. Under Output, make sure that it is selected to show up on the right monitor. It might be selected to show up on an external video output or some other non-existing monitor.

  4. Repeat this for all affected panels by selecting them from the pull-down at the top of the panel preferences window.

David Foerster
  • 35,754
  • 55
  • 92
  • 145
Mark
  • 141
  • 1
  • 2
6

I had the same problem. I tried the answer from Saurav, but that did not work for me.

My panel would never show when I logged in. So I followed the instructions from Xubuntu Panels.

These are the steps that I got it going:

  1. Press Alt+F2.

  2. Type xfce4-panel and press Return. This brings up the Xcfe panel.

  3. Log out of Xfce and tick the Save session for future logins button.

Worked for me.

David Foerster
  • 35,754
  • 55
  • 92
  • 145
psiphi75
  • 918
  • 1
  • 13
  • 25
3

xfce4-panel --restart and a 10 sec wait worked for me.

Prathu Baronia
  • 2,391
  • 1
  • 11
  • 13
2

Re-installing xfce4-panel would solve this issue

Follow these steps to re-install and re-configure xfce4-panel. Open terminal and execute these commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -f install --reinstall xfce4-panel

Be sure that you don't remove other packages while installing. Check the installation message carefully.

Once installed execute following command to re-configure xfce:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure $(sudo dpkg -l | grep xfce | awk '{print $2}' | tr '\n' ' ')
sudo update-initramfs -u

Then reboot your system.

Saurav Kumar
  • 14,746
  • 16
  • 62
  • 76
0

It worked for me by below steps:

  1. Open xfce4-panel
  2. Go to Items
  3. Select + to add new items
  4. Search for the Launcher/Whisker menu and add it
Umesh
  • 1