Invisible panel causing me problems

[NumericalMethods]

Hey folks,

Have to say on the whole I'm really enjoying my time with KDE 4.1.2 it might not be perfect yet but it is a nice place to be! I've caused a problem that isn't major but is causing me some stress to sort out.

One of the first things I did after migrating from KDE 3.5 was to mess around with the panel on the bottom of my screen. Unfortunately, I did something that caused it to resize to zero or disappear or something. This has caused me a problem by only allowing me to create new panels that are attached to the top of the screen (not my prefered position). I can't move any new panels. I thought the best thing would be to rename .kde directory and let KDE create new settings for me; but no! If I do this and log back in and I have a blank panel at the top of my screen (unmovable) and a bunch of new invisible widgets created on said invisible panel. This is definitely not what I'm after.

So my question is what should I do next to reset or delete all the panels on my desktop so that I can start again? Thanks in advance.

Bill

[aged hippy]

Re: Invisible panel causing me problems

How did you 'migrate'?... did you go for an up-grade of 3.5.10 (dist-up-grade), or re-install?

If you up-graded, were you running the KDE 4 desktop alongside the 3.5.10?

[NumericalMethods]

Re: Invisible panel causing me problems

Hi,

Yes, I migrated from 3.5.10 but I wasn't running KDE4 alongside 3.5.10 at the time.

[Fintan]

Re: Invisible panel causing me problems

When you rename .kde you have to be either: on a live cd or a different linux installation.

You cannot do that with an effect while logged in as the user where that particular .kde resides.

[NumericalMethods]

Re: Invisible panel causing me problems

Oh really??

Did not know that at all. I suppose I could see why that might be the case. Should I go for it and remove the entire .kde directory (losing all my settings) or is there a settings file just for plasma? I see "plasmarc" and "plasma-appletsrc" lurking in ~/.kde/share/config. Also will logging in as root using the recovery console suffice instead of the live cd? (I think is will as I won't be logged into my account)

Thanks very much for the tip

[sjhstorm]

Re: Invisible panel causing me problems

It sounds like you have just removed the panel, when you add a panel it always defaults to the top of the screen. I you left click on any empty part of the panel adjustment bar (the part that has alignment add remove etc) you will get a 4 arrow cursor, you can the drag the panel to any side of the screen.

[NumericalMethods]

Re: Invisible panel causing me problems

Ok. I have the missing panel! I renamed the config files "plasmarc" and "plasma-appletsrc" KDE created new config files when I logged on. All is not perfect though. I can't move panels the way sjhstorm described I don't get the 4 arrow cursor. I've also lost a few settings - like my diary entries from Kontact and my favourite applications list. No idea why these have been affected. I have all the original settings saved so I might try and add the new plasma config files to my old settings directory and see if I get the best of both from there.

[tomp01]

Re: Invisible panel causing me problems

Ok. I have the missing panel! I renamed the config files "plasmarc" and "plasma-appletsrc" KDE created new config files when I logged on. All is not perfect though. I can't move panels the way sjhstorm described I don't get the 4 arrow cursor. I've also lost a few settings - like my diary entries from Kontact and my favourite applications list. No idea why these have been affected. I have all the original settings saved so I might try and add the new plasma config files to my old settings directory and see if I get the best of both from there.

If you want to get your panel back then the easiest way is to issue the command rm ~/.kde/share/config/plasma* from Konsole and reboot. I have had to do this several times when using Intrepid Ibex Beta and it always works.

[NumericalMethods]

Re: Invisible panel causing me problems

@ tomp01

Does this mean that you can move panels across to different positions on the screen after you have reset the config files? I have seen a demo video of plasma on youtube and mine definitely isn't working quite the same as that. I'm going to have a further investigation tomorrow as I think there is something more to this than just the config files. Thanks for the help so far

[tomp01]

Re: Invisible panel causing me problems

@ tomp01

Does this mean that you can move panels across to different positions on the screen after you have reset the config files? I have seen a demo video of plasma on youtube and mine definitely isn't working quite the same as that. I'm going to have a further investigation tomorrow as I think there is something more to this than just the config files. Thanks for the help so far

It restores everything back to a newly installed state, Plasma would break on a regular basis so the only way to get back was to use Alt-F2 to get the run command bar to run Konsole.