Gnome-panel disappearance

[jurchiks]

The first ofc.
You mean the Ctrl+Alt+F1 terminal, right? Because if there are more terminals then I know nothing about them...
I tried both logged in and out, the command 'metacity' as such gave this error.

[Krytarik]

The first ofc.
You mean the Ctrl+Alt+F1 terminal, right? Because if there are more terminals then I know nothing about them...
I tried both logged in and out, the command 'metacity' as such gave this error.

No, I mean a "terminal-emulator", like gnome-terminal. And, again, you must be definetely logged in, otherwise it makes completely no sense.

If you haven't found a way to launch gnome-terminal, which I would totally understand, then just create a launcher for each of those commands, for gnome-panel without "setsid" then.

PS: The Alt+Ctrl+F*, non-X, sessions are usually referred to as "console".

[jurchiks]

Ok, creating launchers and running them did bring up the taskbar again.
Edit: after restart it's still the same and the .xsession-errors is also practically the same:

(polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1589): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: cannot register existing type `_PolkitError'

(polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1589): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed
** Message: applet now removed from the notification area
/usr/bin/compiz (core) - Fatal: Software rendering detected.
/usr/bin/compiz (core) - Error: Failed to manage screen: 0
/usr/bin/compiz (core) - Fatal: No manageable screens found on display :0.0
Initializing nautilus-gdu extension
Nautilus-Share-Message: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: 'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare: cannot open usershare directory /var/lib/samba/usershares. Error No such file or directory
Please ask your system administrator to enable user sharing.

Unable to find a synaptics device.

[Krytarik]

Ok, creating launchers and running them did bring up the taskbar again.
Edit: after restart it's still the same and the .xsession-errors is also practically the same:

Good that it at least works without Compiz, that tells us that everthing else is ok.
That you get the same issues after a restart is the expected behaviour.

Now we have to find a way to bring up Compiz without killing gnome-panel.

Why exactly couldn't you install the proprietary video driver?
I guess, at the moment the somewhat unstable "nouveau" driver is run.
It would be very helpful, if you could install the proprietary driver in any way.

What is the output of the following command?:

lshw -c video

[jurchiks]

  *-display               
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: G92 [GeForce 9800 GT]
       vendor: nVidia Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: a2
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nouveau latency=0
       resources: irq:16 memory:f6000000-f6ffffff memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:f4000000-f5ffffff ioport:a000(size=128) memory:f7000000-f701ffff

I have the nvidia drivers downloaded, but the file extension is .run and it tries to open it with text editor (wtf really?). I also had JDK and Eclipse both for Linux, but Eclipse simply refused to open (no reaction on double-clicking the executable) and JDK was in the .tar.gz archive and mounting it I also couldn't run the main file (but I'm not 100% sure on this one as I've already forgotten, I had too many problems with this stuff).

Edit: found some ways of running the .run file, first one (Properties>Permissions>Allow executing file as program) is reset the moment I tick it.
Using console and chmod +x, made it work, but now running it gives me this error: "ERROR: nvidia-installer must be run as root"

But of course, Ubuntu has no root account, how cool is that?
Now I'm digging to find out how to run the file from the root terminal.

Edit2: great, nvidia homepage has a shitload of reading on how to install video drivers... amazing to say the least.

[Krytarik]

Just run it with the prefix "sudo", you will be asked for your (own) password then.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

[jurchiks]

I'm running it in root terminal (the one in applications>system tools menu), but now it asks me to turn off X server.
Edit: right, turning off Xorg process didn't help, running it before logging in didn't help, running it from root console from recovery mode (the next choice in grub's boot menu) also didn't help as it couldn't find the damn file! I cd to my home folder (/home/jurchiks) and try to run the damn file but it says it doesn't exist! Every other console/terminal can find it but this one can't! WTH is going on with this ****?
Why is installing video drivers such a science on Linux?

[Krytarik]

Normally it's not that difficult to install the driver, you wouldn't have to do it manually, but since you said your internet connection is crippling slow, I didn't want to entail you the "normal" way, which is via "System -> Administration -> Additional Drivers".

So, it seems that nothing has changed since I installed the driver manually the last time. You have to run the installer either like you did, at the console of the recovery mode, or logout and stop X/GDM:
- logout
- switch to a console by pressing Alt+Ctrl+F1
- login

sudo service gdm stop

- locate the installer
- run it like that:

./NVIDIA*.run

- reboot (just to be sure)

[jurchiks]

The problem is that it gives me an error: "The distribution-provided pre-install script failed!"
It offers to continue, but since I can't know if that pre-install script is necassary I chose not to take the risk.
Should I ignore it and continue after all?

[Krytarik]

Did you follow something like that?:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NvidiaManual

But since you would have to download more packages that way either, I think it would be even faster, and simplier and more forsighted anyways, if you would choose to install the driver via "Additional Drivers".