Ubuntu – Unity doesn’t load, no Launcher, no Dash appears, ccsm method failed

compizlauncherunityunity-dash

I have Ubuntu 16.04 in hp laptop. Few days before my unity launcher and everything disappeared. I have the second account on this PC on which Unity is working perfectly fine. I have tried links such as:

I can use ccsm and it is showing me every option required. And even though I enable Unity plugin and every other option comes for enabling it, but even after the reboot, I can't get my Unity back, and again if I launch ccsm then I can see Unity plugin is unselected. What should I do?

Best Answer

Your CCSM configuration isn't sticking because you don't have ownership (permission) of key configuration files and folders in your home directory. You can verify this with:

$ find ~/ ! -user $(whoami)

To regain ownership of files in your home folder you can run this command:

$ sudo chown -R $(whoami):$(whoami) ~/

That should be sufficient for loading the desktop successfully. The CCSM configuration you mention in your question would then stick between reboots.

This issue is created by running certain GUI applications as sudo.

Update:

The resolution was to rename the ~user folder and create a clean one. Then copy the files from the old ~user folder.

The steps need to be performed a different account). Create an account B. Login as B. To perform the steps. The B needs to have sudo access. This can be done with. Consider A your account and B the different account to perform the commands.

$ sudo adduser B sudo

From the terminal (of B login) run:

$ cd ~A
$ cd ..
$ sudo mv A A.str
$ sudo mkdir A
$ sudo chown A:A A
$ sudo ln -s A.str ~A/A.str

Now login as A and copy or move your content from a folder A.str in your fresh login.

Related Question