How to restart/refresh MATE without logout?

Support & Help Requests
,
1

Hello everybody!

I want to know this: How can I restart/refresh MATE without logout?

After a while without using my laptop my MATE desktop crashed, I only see dots or pixels ("…") everywhere (menu, app, etc) and I can’t see any text. I can see windows and buttons.

I fixed it with logout/login, but I want to keep all my apps open.

I found this solution How to restart MATE's graphical environment via SSH? but the logout is required for this solution.

Versions:
Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS
MATE 1.16.2
Kernel Linux 4.4.0-79-generic x86_64
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-4500U CPU @ 1.80GHz × 4
graphics card: Intel Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller

2

This might help: From within a terminal window, or Ctrl+Alt+F2 to get to a virtual terminal, then type:
mate-panel --reset
or
killall mate-panel

Reference: http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=127724.0

3

[quote=“navarroaxel, post:1, topic:13726”]After a while without using my laptop my MATE desktop crashed, I only see dots or pixels ("…") everywhere (menu, app, etc) and I can’t see any text. I can see windows and buttons.[/quote]Whereas your workaround (simply restarting the DE) obviously is effective, personally I think I’d much rather see this particular issue fixed/resolved.

So, I’d suggest looking for the cause. Instead of merely treating the symptoms.

4

How can I diagnosis this behavior?

5

But the --reset argument makes a reset to factory and I don’t want that.

6

[quote=“navarroaxel, post:4, topic:13726, full:true”]How can I diagnosis this behavior?[/quote]Well, in this case – not entirely sure. It is very specific and somewhat unexpected behaviour. I’ve personally not observed it before.

Could you tell me the exact process? As in, are you hibernating the machine without ever shutting it down and is it after several of such hibernations that things get weird? Or is it just randomly on its own?

Things like that. Talk us through what happens leading up to the phenomenon.

7

I have a second monitor using HDMI, my primary is my laptop eDP1 touch screen. And I left the keyboard by 1 o 2 hours and when I logged in back I saw that. Everything was functional but I cannot read nothing. I didn't suspend or hibernate my laptop. My current energy plan is never put computer to sleep, but put the display to sleep after 5 min.

My touch (xinput) -> eGalax Inc. eGalaxTouch EXC7910-1057-13.00.00 id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
And every time I plug in my second monitor I need to run this command xinput map-to-output 10 eDP1. Otherwise the touch maps to the 2 monitors area.

8

Try not letting the display go to sleep; disable your screensaver, see if the problem persists. If unhooking the screensaver obviates the issue, then we know it’s something to do with the screensaver, etc.

9

This is how my screen appears:

ubuntu.jpg871×653 71.3 KB

I can't see text and I can't use the print screen key, so I toke the photo with a camera. :relieved:

10

That is such an odd phenomenon. Looks like either some driver related corruption or, worst case scenario, hardware related artifacts. Based on the hopeful scenario, that it is purely software – let’s start with:

glxinfo -B

1 Like
11

name of display: :0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
Extended renderer info (GLX_MESA_query_renderer):
Vendor: Intel Open Source Technology Center (0x8086)
Device: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Haswell Mobile (0xa16)
Version: 12.0.6
Accelerated: yes
Video memory: 1536MB
Unified memory: yes
Preferred profile: core (0x1)
Max core profile version: 3.3
Max compat profile version: 3.0
Max GLES1 profile version: 1.1
Max GLES[23] profile version: 3.0
OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Haswell Mobile
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 12.0.6
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 3.30
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile

OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 12.0.6
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
OpenGL context flags: (none)

OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.0 Mesa 12.0.6
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00

12

I’ve seen similar symptoms when the mount for the partition where shared fonts live gets messed up. To me it smells of missing font. Suggest checking that direction if you run out of clues.

1 Like
13

To me it actually smells of a graphics driver issue. What you could consider is grabbing updated graphics drivers off of this PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/ubuntu/graphics-drivers?field.series_filter=xenial

14

One of us’ll get it sooner or later. :wink:

15

Well, one simple thing we could try to possibly rule out some font issues is rebuild the font cache:

sudo fc-cache -fv

Personally, I’d also be interested in the output of the following:

cat /proc/meminfo

and

cat /proc/swaps

It might even be related to swap issues. The kernel swapping relevant data away and the swap somehow having been corrupted when the data is addressed and needs to be retrieved from swap. Lots of options where things could be going wrong. :wink:

But, never give up, never surrender!

1 Like
16

I have anothers problems (the mate-volume-control-applet stop working and the multimedia keys stop working).

So I create a little script to restart several part of mate.

I hope this helps.

#!/bin/bash
mate-settings-daemon --replace &
mate-panel --replace &
marco --no-composite --replace &
killall mate-volume-control-applet
killall caja
mate-volume-control-applet &
killall compton
compton &
4 Likes
19

you arnt the hero we want but the hero we need, or at least i did, thank you

1 Like
20

I do it with this combo:

Ctrl + Alt + Esc

21

this one helps. Thanks!

I just wonder - how do you manage to know how to write this script ? :open_mouth:

22

That killed all my apps, whereas I only wanted the panels to reappear.

They did reappear, but killing all the apps is the same as logging out and back in, which would at least let me save my work.