KPanel gone; need to fix it, or create new admin user, or create new home dir

[DarkTygur]

Something happened, and the KPanel is gone (is that what it's called? - it's the bar at the bottom of the screen that shows running apps, and that contains the KMenu button)

What I really need to do is get it back. But if that can't happen, I'm willing to refresh my home directory back to it was in the beginning, which would fix the problem. If that can't be done either, I'd be willing to make a new user that has all the rights as the first one did. But without the KPanel/KMenu, I can't get to the tools to do that stuff.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Snowhog]

Re: KPanel gone; need to fix it, or create new admin user, or create new home dir

Alt+F2
type: kcontrol
Click on Desktop
Click on Panels
Click on Hiding
In Hide Mode, ensure that Only hide when a panel-hiding button is clicked is checked
Ensure that neither of the Panel-Hiding Buttons section is checked

Make corrections as necessary, click Apply and then close. You may have to restart.

[DarkTygur]

Re: KPanel gone; need to fix it, or create new admin user, or create new home di

Thanks, but "Only hide..." was already selected, and neither checkbox for the panel-hiding buttons is checked. Any other ideas?

[SheeEttin]

Re: KPanel gone; need to fix it, or create new admin user, or create new home dir

Is it just hiding, or really gone?
Hit Alt+F2 or Alt+Space, enter "konsole", and execute "ps -e | grep kicker". If any results are returned, Kicker (the name of the panel app) is running, but not showing itself. If it doesn't return anything, then kicker is not running, and "kicker" will start it.

If Kicker is running, try "killall kicker" then "kicker" to see if it starts working.

[DarkTygur]

Re: KPanel gone; need to fix it, or create new admin user, or create new home di

Thanks! It looks like I'm getting closer to the problem. I typed that into Konsole, and there were no results. So I next typed Kicker, and it showed! Now I gotta find out why it's not showing when I log in. Any ideas?

[Snowhog]

Re: KPanel gone; need to fix it, or create new admin user, or create new home dir

With it now running, right-click on an empty part of the panel and again:

Click on Panels
Click on Hiding
In Hide Mode, ensure that Only hide when a panel-hiding button is clicked is checked
Ensure that neither of the Panel-Hiding Buttons section is checked

If all is marked correctly, perform a normal system restart. Linux 'remembers' the state it was in when shutting down. When the system restarts, the panel *should* still be visible.

[DarkTygur]

Re: KPanel gone; need to fix it, or create new admin user, or create new home di

I actually just fixed it! It wasn't hiding - it simply wasn't there, as SheeEttin apparently supposed. Armed with my newfound knowledge that something called "kicker" was failing to start, I searched for "kde startup sequence" on Google, and discovered that something called ksmserver is supposed to start kicker, and that it looks at "$KDEDIR/share/autostart" to decide what to start. In my home directory, under .kde/share/autostart I found a lone file called panel.desktop. Its contents were as follows:

[Desktop Entry]
Hidden=true

I moved it to trash and restarted, and my problem was fixed. I don't know how that file got there in the first place, but I'm glad the problem's gone now.

[Snowhog]

Re: KPanel gone; need to fix it, or create new admin user, or create new home dir

Good for you. See, researching works. Of course, some help from other users usually never hurts either. :P

[lowey23]

Re: KPanel gone; need to fix it, or create new admin user, or create new home dir

It is a bit late now, but I seem to remember Jucato posting an answer to this some time ago, and it was something as simple as (for example) just pressing (perhaps) Cntrl M?