Ubuntu – No panels in Ubuntu? libcanberra-tk cannot open shared object file

gnomeUbuntu

I booted up Ubuntu and have a background but no panels. Everything else seems to work fine, I can get into terminal and run Firefox for instance. I can create folders on my desktop, etc.

I'm new to Linux so was kind of just guessing to figure out what to do, I tried launching gnome-panel:

$ sudo gnome-panel
gnome-panel: error while loading shared libraries: libcanberra-gtk.so.0: cannot open shared object file: Input/output error

Reinstalling gnome-panel doesn't help. I noticed I get the same error on anything I do:

$ gksudo firefox
    Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module": libcanberra-gtk.so.0: cannot open shared object file: Input/output error

Yet Firefox loads. Any ideas? I'm assuming "panel" is the correct word, what I'm talking about is the bar at the top where you can launch applications from.

Best Answer

An "Input/Output Error" almost inevitably means your disk needs a fsck (or a hardware error). Check your kernel logs for sda/sdb/sdc/etc. and you will probably find some errors/warnings.

Firefox working because it is loading without the canberra-gtk-module support (libcanberra being used for playing simple sounds), but gnome-panel refuses to even run without it.

I have had a similar effect on a dual-graphics laptop, the menu bar/shortcut bar ran on one GPU while the desktop background/icons ran on the second (unity on ubuntu) and I only saw the latter, but I don't think that is your problem in this case.

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