How do I restore a 'panel' in Ubuntu?

I accidentally removed one of the default panels in Ubuntu 9.04 which contained (among other items) my Dropbox icon, GMail notifier & battery meter.

This happened when I right-clicked what I thought was an icon to remove it, but instead the whole panel disappeared (the panel was located just to the left of the clock & volume control in the top right of the screen).

Now I can't get access to my Dropbox icon icon (have tried un/reinstalling) etc.

Anyone know how I can restore the panel, or failing that the Dropbox icon?

pelms

Posted 2009-07-17T15:49:03.227

Reputation: 8 283

Your question just saved my life :-) (and I learned something new) – Itay Moav -Malimovka – 2010-10-11T12:49:19.467

4Just a tip: do a search for "Gnome restore panel," not "Ubuntu restore panel," when problems like this come up. You'll find more results because this has to do more with the desktop environment than with the distro. – Nikhil Chelliah – 2009-07-17T16:03:02.183

Good point Nikhil. I was searching on "ubuntu" rather than "gnome" (linux newbie me). – pelms – 2009-07-17T18:37:52.213

Answers

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

It turns out that what was missing was the 'Notification area' - which itself contains various icons - rather than a whole panel (which explains why several icons disappeared when I clicked 'Remove from panel').

When I re-added this via 'Add to panel' all my missing stuff reappeared (Dropbox, Gmail notifier, battery meter etc).

alt text

pelms

Posted 2009-07-17T15:49:03.227

Reputation: 8 283

Actually, they did fix the described problem in the best way possible. – Dykam – 2009-07-27T19:01:10.027

I think that for a Linux newbie, the distinction between a 'panel' and a 'notification area' - which both contain multiple icons within an area of the taskbar - is not obvious. I think there were clues in the question that I was using the wrong term (I did upvote the other answers as I'm sure they'd be useful to other users). – pelms – 2009-08-23T03:30:56.723

On SuperUser, the convention is to leave a comment or edit uour original question with thanks, rather than create a whole new answer. Assuming you're new, welcome! – Lucas Jones – 2009-07-17T18:58:28.607

I created a new answer as the existing ones didn't fix my problem (though they presumably would have if I had actually removed a 'panel' rather than the 'notification area' as I first thought). – pelms – 2009-07-20T12:02:28.667

I generally use the following:

gconftool-2 --shutdown && rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel && pkill gnome-panel

Please notice this will also reset the other panels. You can't restore one single panel.

Dykam

Posted 2009-07-17T15:49:03.227

Reputation: 208

I did this, too, and found this answer here:

Type this in terminal: sudo dpkg-reconfigure ubuntu-desktop

I personally think this is a giant usability problem - removing the panel should be a lot harder to do by mistake.

Nathan Long

Posted 2009-07-17T15:49:03.227

Reputation: 20 371