Ubuntu – gnome-panel has multiple rows — how to undo that

gnome-panel

On Ubuntu 12.04 I use openbox with a single "gnome-panel" started. But after trying to configure my two screen in Xinerama mode I got additional rows of panels each time X restarted.

And despite I completely reverted to my one-screen-X-config

  • the gnome-panel displayed has 4 rows (4 at top sreen, 4 at bottom)
  • only the outermost row has content, the other 3 are empty
  • there is only one gnome-panel process running
  • some widgets appear 4 times, too, although they run only once
  • when I switch away from openbox using unity I am back to 1 row temporarily

What went wrong here? How do I undo that? Things that did not help:

  • rm -Rf .gnome2 .gconf/ .compiz-1/
  • pkill panel, and restarting it

Best Answer

Run the following, apparently gnome3 stores configuration in binary form (I haven't read up on dconf enough to know where or why).

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

Run: dconf-editor to edit the config.

Go to: org.gnome.gnome-panel.layout (it's pretty intuitive)

The defaults seem to be:

object-id-list     ['menu-bar', 'indicators', 'show-desktop', 'window-list', 'workspace-switcher']
toplevel-id-list   ['top-panel', 'bottom-panel']

I had to figure this out after I had some weird issue with gnome while trying to get my 2 monitors to work. Everything (menus, rows, clock, etc.) seemed to duplicate on the panel after every attempt to restart the X server. I should have took a screenshot but this is essentially what I had before I fixed it:

object-id-list     ['menu-bar', 'indicators', 'show-desktop', 'window-list', 'workspace-switcher', 'menu-bar-0', 'indicators-0', 'show-desktop-0', 'window-list-0', 'workspace-switcher-0', 'menu-bar-1', 'indicators-1', 'show-desktop-1', 'window-list-1', 'workspace-switcher-1']
toplevel-id-list   ['top-panel', 'bottom-panel', 'top-panel-screen1', 'bottom-panel-screen1', 'top-panel-screen1-0', 'bottom-panel-screen1-0']

As you can see, there's 3 of everything.

Related Question