Ubuntu Vancouver Technical Support

Panel is Frozen

Asked by Genny

The past week or so I have had issues with my desktop/panel. Half the time I log in my notes that I have first appear are frozen. The other half the time I log in my notes and my entire panel are frozen. That is right I cannot access my places, do admin stuff or heck even open a program other then what is in my Avant Window Navigator (Open office, music program, Moz Firefox etc). The past few days my panel and my notes have been frozen. The overall look of my programs (ie RhythemBox) looks very different though this may have to do with a recent update my laptop performed. I wish i could take a screen-shot but that requires my panel!

I thought I could just wipe my drive clean and re-install Ubuntu 10.04 but I want to be able to back up everything first, but I can't do that with no panel. I also may want to wait until 11.04 is out of beta to be up to date with the latest version. If anyone can offer some help as how to unfreeze my panel it would be greatly appreciated! thx Genny

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Bruno
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Bruno (bruno-vernier) said : 		#1

Hi Ginny

Are you able to press ALT-F2 to open the "run program" dialog box?

if you can, please try running "sudo killall -9 gnome-panel"

if not, can you press CTRL-ALT-F1 , login and "sudo killall -9 gnome-panel" then ALT-F7 to get back to the GUI

does that solve the problem?

later, if you reboot or logout and login again, do you keep having to do the above?

if so, repeat the above but use: "sudo debconf gnome-panel" or "sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-panel" which should restore a usable configuration

more ideas at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1427917 like getting rid of xpenguins applet

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Genny (gbourdages) said : 		#2

hi Bruno,
  I had some success but I need some clarification. After I typed in sudo killall -9 gnome-panel the computer said something like Sudo command does not exist.
 Do you mean:
command "Sudo" from package "Sudo" (Main)
command "Sudo" from package "ldap" (Universe)
command "Sudo" from package "udo" (Universe)

I'm thinking you want me to go with the first option. I just want to double check since I'm not very familiar with Terminal.

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Bruno (bruno-vernier) said : 		#3

yes, choose option 1 "sudo package"

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Genny (gbourdages) said : 		#4

ok so now it needs to know how I intend to kill it. There are a lot of options, anything from "kill process younger then TIME, kill process older then TIME, wait for process to die, kill process group instead of process and many more.

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Bruno (bruno-vernier) said : 		#5

please replace "-9" with "-HUP" as I think you have a version of killall that does not understand -9

so it becomes "sudo killall -HUP gnome-panel"

translation: "clear the gnome-panel from RAM memory by sending a H(ang)UP (hangup) signal to it" ... that should reset the default gnome-panel settings , unfreezing it

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Genny (gbourdages) said : 		#6

I typed that in and here is what I got:

Command not found.

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Best Bruno (bruno-vernier) said : 		#7

press ALT F2
then type "xterm" without the quotes
then you will see a terminal window
in the window, type "sudo killall -HUP gnome-panel"

and cut and paste the error message here, if any

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Genny (gbourdages) said : 		#8

Error: Command not found.

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Genny (gbourdages) said : 		#9

I'm not sure if what I did last helped at all, but now my panel is no longer frozen! So it's fixed now! Thanks so much for the help Bruno.

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Bruno (bruno-vernier) said : 		#10

excellent, Genny!

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Genny (gbourdages) said : 		#11

Thanks Bruno, that solved my question.

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Ian Ross (iankross) said : 		#12

On 11-05-06 06:35 PM, Genny wrote:
> Question #156189 on Ubuntu Vancouver LoCo Technical Support changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu-vancouver-loco-tech-support/+question/156189
>
> Genny confirmed that the question is solved:
> Thanks Bruno, that solved my question.
>
 Good job Bruno! Genny you done good!
Way to go.
Roscoe.