Introduction

Students in Computing Science may occasionally experience problems with the lab computers' desktop environment (currently xfce4). One of the most common issues is for menu bars to go missing from applications (e.g. You attempt to move a window and are not able to find a menu bar to do so.) You may also find that when you log into a computer all you get is a completely blank desktop with no icons. These issues are usually caused by improperly exiting your X Windows session (i.e. not doing a clean log out). After this happens, you may experience these problems each time you log back in.

This article recommends two fixes, depending on the severity of the issue.

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Applicability

This article applies to computer labs running Ubuntu (Linux) in the Department of Computing Science and to the VirtualBox VM which the department provides to students.

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Symptoms

You may experience:

• Missing menu bars in X Windows
• Graphical anomalies in your X Windows sessions
• A completely empty desktop when you log in
• Incompatible monitor resolutions

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Cause

Often this occurs as a result of failing to cleanly exit an X Windows session.

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Resolution

There are two fixes, depending on the severity of the issue.

1. The following command will restore a number of xfwm (X Windows) settings. It can be run in a terminal window within your current graphical session:

2.  Log out of your graphical X Windows session, then press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to log in to the text console. Remove the following four directories, which store information about how xfce is set up:

rm -rf .config
rm -rf .cache
rm -rf .gconf
rm -rf .gconfd

Type exit to log out of the text console, then press Ctrl+Alt+F7 to return to X Windows. When you log in you will be asked what to do about the missing config files. Choose to restore them to their defaults.

Keywords: computing science, computer science, cs, comp sci, compsci, csc, x windows, xwindows, xfce, missing, menu bar, launcher, icons, resolution, linux, ubuntu, lab, x11, xfce corruption, blank desktop, empty desktop, no icons