[SOLVED] Fedora 14 - no gnome-panel visible when gnome started

Tijn · 01-03-2011, 04:51 PM

1-2 weeks ago I've installed Fedora 14 on 2 machines. One (64bit) is OK with respect to gnome-panel, but on the second one (32bit) I have a strange problem.
KDE is OK, but when I start Gnome, I see no gnome panel.

Code:

ps -ea | grep gnome-panel

displays that it is running.
When I kill it, it does re-spawn.
But no gnome panel bar is visible (neither the top menu, nor the bottom taskbar). Alt+F2 pops up the "Run application dialogue"

Both machines are updated by "yum update".
Gnome panel package version is gnome-panel-2.32.0.2-2.fc14.i686.

On the affected machine, I have moved my /home data from simple subdir on / partition to a dedicated partition (/home is a logical volume on to of RAID1):

Code:

mount | grep home
/dev/mapper/vg_md2-lv_home on /home type ext3 (rw)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/martin/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=username)

Similar setup I have on the "working" 64bit machine (though at the moment the RAID1 is degraded to just one physical disk there... but that should not be the issue)

At the time of moving the /home, there was just one user account. Later, after moving /home, I've created 2 more and all of them have the same problem with gnome.

Could this be a selinux + ~/.gvfs issue?
selinux context for .gvfs is same as at the machine which has no issues:

Code:

ls -aZ ~ | grep .gvfs
dr-x------. username username system_u:object_r:fusefs_t:s0    .gvfs

Any other suggestions?

smoker · 01-03-2011, 11:47 PM

Whenever I've had that issue, I log out then back in and it usually appears. It is more graphics related than SELinux I think. The panel doesn't appear until everything on it is ready for use, so there may be an issue with networking or bluetooth startup that is slowing the panels appearance.

networking.dept · 01-05-2011, 12:39 AM

@Tijn, What happens when you kill and start gnome panel again ?

Execute by following way and let me know its working or not.

#killall gnome-panel
#gnome-panel &

Tijn · 01-05-2011, 07:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by networking.dept

@Tijn, What happens when you kill and start gnome panel again ?

Execute by following way and let me know its working or not.

#killall gnome-panel
#gnome-panel &

I have tried this, mate - but it did not help.

Eventually I have identified (yestarday's late-nite investigation...) that it the origin of the problem is a bogus display auto-detection. For some reason (BIOS bug?) FC14 detects 2 monitors - LVDS1 + VGA1 (if using VGA-connected display) or LVDS1 + DVI1 (if using DVI-connected display)
This can be identified using following command:

Code:

$ xrandr -q

Like on a laptop with attached extra monitor - autoconfig sometimes did dual-screen configuration, with one of the monitors non-existing. The "missing" monitor was unfortunately Primary, LVDS1, so all what was visible was the secondary screen; the gnome-panel was on the primary, invisible one.
But the machine is not any laptop - but a desktop, with a single connected monitor ! (just being installed as a HTPC...)
The motherboard type is MSI 945GT Speedster-A4R, socket-based MicroATX board for use with mobile Intel CPUs (core/Yonnah and core2/Merom).
It worked well earlier with Fedora 9 - no such issues during more then 4 years.

I have figured this out when I had strange video resolution setup issues with xbmc, and later also gdm became confused - so the issues converged to one point.
In any case - KDE somehow managed it better then Gnome. Actually, I have diagnosed it by executing (in the crippled gnome session) Alt+F2 -> gnome-display-properties.

The final solution was to add the following line at the end of the gdm configuration file /etc/gdm/Init/Default

Code:

/usr/bin/xrandr --output LVDS1 --off