Ubuntu – how to restore Mate panel

16.04matepanelsettings

I was tweaking the mate panel trying to solve some other problem, when I changed the panel settings, from GNOME2, to something else. all my panel apps disappeared. Suspicious of that happening, I clicked the save button, before hand, but now I don't know how to restore my panel apps, there is no button for that.

From Zanna's comment, it would appear I am missing a feature of Mate Tweak. I don't see the panel option anywhere. This might be why I cannot restore my save. http://imgur.com/a/3VyWr

Best Answer

This is a surprising and unnatural behavior of mate-tweak -- you want to "tweak" your settings, but instead you lose all of your prior customizations.

To avoid loss when using the Interface tab, it is critical that the first action you take is to click Save Panel Layout.

After that, if something outrageous happens, you should be able to restore by selecting the Custom option from the drop-down that is immediately above Save Panel Layout.

Underlying this behavior, it seems, is the wildly incorrect notion by mate-tweak that it is the only tool that will be used to configure your panels.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Where have the Panel Applets gone in Natty

Well this has been an adventure. I had seen this MintForum thread before but ignored it mainly because it was talking about bonobo (which is frankly a silly word) but also because the applet in discussion was the MintMenu.

I decided to go back there today and actually read it. plumm's post has given me a few clues and has actually got a few things working (after some modification). Here's what I'm doing. Until I've got everything back this post is a work in progress.

First you have to locate your bonobo-activation-config file:

# locate bonobo-activation-config
/etc/bonobo-activation/bonobo-activation-config.xml

Then we find where all the applets' bonobo-server-item-configuration files are:

# locate bonobo/server | grep GNOME
/usr/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_BrightnessApplet.server
/usr/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_DictionaryApplet.server
/usr/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_GtikApplet.server
/usr/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_InhibitApplet.server
/usr/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_Magnifier.server
/usr/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_Moniker_std.server
/usr/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_SeahorseApplet.server
/usr/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_TSClientApplet.server
/usr/local/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_ClockApplet_Factory.server
/usr/local/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_FishApplet_Factory.server
/usr/local/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_NotificationAreaApplet.server
/usr/local/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_Wncklet_Factory.server

Then we put the two together, creating new xml <items> in the bonobo-activation-config.xml. We only need the common path so there are only two things to carry. Here's my finished file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<oafconfig>

<searchpath>
    <item>/usr/lib/bonobo/servers</item>
    <item>/usr/local/lib/bonobo/servers</item>
</searchpath>

</oafconfig>

After a restart everything but GNOME_ClockApplet has loaded back up.

Ubuntu – How to restore MATE panel settings from old backup

If you have backup of your dconf database file, which is usually in ~/.config/dconf/user you can restore settings from that database. But some work needs to be done.

Dconf reads database values from a profile file (See wiki here). And the path of that profile file is read from the DCONF_PROFILE environment variable.

So, first create a file named user2 in your home directory with content like this
```
user-db:user2
```
Put your old dconf database file in ~/.config/dconf/ directory with name user2. There should be a file with name user already.
Open a terminal and extract the settings from old database
```
DCONF_PROFILE=~/user2 dconf dump /org/mate > ~/mate-old
```
This will dump the values from old dconf database in key-value format in ~/mate-old file.
Now load the settings back into the current database
```
dconf load /org/mate/ < ~/mate-old
```

This will restore most of the settings of mate.

Extra: If you want you can restore the whole database using / in place of /org/mate. But I'm not recommending this.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Where have the Panel Applets gone in Natty

Ubuntu – How to restore MATE panel settings from old backup

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