Catastrophe, all settings and taskbars gone

Support & Help Requests Raspberry Pi
#1

So this all started because I didn’t check the trash before emptying it. I was transferring a movie into the movies folder on my external drive using paste into folder, only for some reason, it sent the movies folder, along with 800 some odd films, into trash. I absentmindedly hit empty trash and a couple minutes after discovered what I had done. The drive is ntfs, so i was using ntfsundelete to recover, and it was working.

Until I discovered i had forgotten to tell it where to put the recovered files, so it put them in my home directory until the sd card was full. then it wouldn’t let me delete anything so I was stuck. So I shutdown, pulled the sd card and removed some items by hand on another computer. I put my card back in the pi and booted it up and my custom login screen came up fine, but when i got into Mate, my custom background and icons were gone, and the top and bottom taskbars were too. SO I tried to change my background and it did nothing. Same with the theme. I’ve been using alt f2 to get to programs, and I know a few key shortcuts, but its a temporary fix.

Im curious what i did and how to get my system back to where it was.

Also, I use berryboot, not sure if that had something to do with it.

I’m running 16.04.2 on a Raspi3.

Unresponsive desktop - but only for existing user profile (16.04)
#2

Wow, tough day. Think I would of took to drink :slight_smile:

I don’t own a Pi, but thought I ask if it comes with mate-tweak? If so, pull it up (mate-tweak) and try changing panels. Could also see if changing the window manager (to compiz) will do anything. Again, if you have mate tweak.

#3

Drankin’s what got me in this mess in the first place. :smiling_imp:

Protip: Don’t work on your comuter when you come home at bar thirty.

Tweak doesn’t seem to nothin either.

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#4

I would also try reinstalling mate-panel and mate-panel-common.

A fix all command that may also work on a Pi:

sudo apt -f install
#5

Should i “apt remove --purge” or is there a reinstall command?

#6

Think I just go with a reinstall command.

sudo apt install --reinstall mate-panel mate-panel-common

-f install say anything?

#7

Nothing on -f install.

Rebooting to see what happens

I just discovered that i can’t change the settings for anything. I went to sound settings to turn off the obnoxious system sounds and though it gave me the option to turn them off, it stayed right there on Ubuntu.

And while the system sounds work, they dont work for applications.

#8

All of your panel settings are stored in your /home directory. If you have placed /home in a different partition from the root/system directory, and your /etc/fstab has been corrupted somehow so your /home partition isn’t getting mounted over /home, then your panel icons and background and all the other settings you’ve tweaked will just disappear until you get the mount situation ironed out.

There’s also the possibility that you are using one of the earlier kernels. Of all the kernels that have come out of the repo since i installed ubuntu-mate, all those preceding the rev-70 kernel (and associated initramfs) have intermittently skipped some mounts from fstab on my xps13. I believe they might have fixed what appears to have been a systemd timing issue, but i’ve only been running the rev-70 kernel for a day or two; it hasn’t been misbehaving like the rev-66 kernel and those before it were misbehaving on my xps13. I don’t know why everybody hasn’t been seeing skipped mounts, so i’ve been attributing it to some xps13 peculiarity that drives out a timing bug in systemd, but without spending unconscionable amounts of time digging, i can’t say for sure what it was or even if it’s stopped, i just haven’t seen evidence of the issue since i installed the rev-70 kernel.

If you have multiple userids set up, check the others; if it’s a missing mount (however it got that way) they would also be messed up.

Maybe this isn’t the issue that’s causing the problem, but it’s something to check imo. I don’t own a pi and know nothing about them. Good luck,

#9

Also try:

sudo dpkg --configure -a
#10

That didn’t work either.

Whats the hotkey for the main menu i was thinking i could try creating another user and seeing what happens when i log in there.

Crankypuss, thanks for replying but I understood exactly none of what you just wrote.

#11

Excellent idea :slight_smile:

Or just switch to your “guest session” if you have one.

#12

Awesome. Whats the name of the program that does " users and groups" from alt- F2?

#13

The command:

users-admin
#14

Guest session works perfectly. So what does that tell me?

#15

Maybe your /.config need to reset, but why not just create a new user with admin (sudo) rights and use it.

#16

I did create a new admin, but I would still like to know what happened to the original account.

#17

Like I said, maybe ~/.config. I really don’t have anything to go on yet, so just a guess.

Can you compare the new and old /.config?

#18

theres a lot of stuff in this folder. What am i looking for?

#19

Don’t put too much into it, like I said, its just guess work.

But you are back to normal with a new user?

#20

yeah im good, just need to move some stuff from the other account to this one.

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