The Case of the Disappearing Panel

[Robert Drucker <robert ocean washington edu>]

I'm running gnome on a Linux 6.0 install (Pentium II machine).  Lately the
panel keeps disappearing.  Usually I'll be moving some window, and all of
a sudden I notice that the panel is gone.  Sometimes a popup dialog box
will appear asking me if I really want to start a second panel, but
whether I answer yes or no I don't get my panel back.  I can
ctrl-alt-backspace out of X, and when I restart X my panel is back, all
nicely decorated as before.  Also, while out of X, I notice there are a
lot of gnome errors listed on the screen that have no meaning to me.

I use matlab a lot, and I think this problem has occured mainly (if not
entirely) when matlab is running.  I've written to their technical support
about it but they don't know from gnome.


Robert Drucker