Re: Lost panel

[Tom Gilbert <gilbertt tomgilbert freeserve co uk>]

* Peter Wainwright (prw@wainpr.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, 29 Sep 1999 22:34:32 Tobias Klaus wrote:
> > I had the same problem. Press /panel/ at the cammand prompt, and you'll
> > get a new one, which is the original one without your changes. There may
> > be a message that there is one already running (I don't remember
> > exactly) - press "yes". The real problem about it is, that your nice
> > customisation is gone :-(
> > Still, it would be nice, if (a) there would be a better way to deal with
> > the problem, or even better (b) not to have this problem. ;-)
> 
> This is one of the really irritating things with Gnome, and it really
> has to be sorted before Gnome is ready for generaly use by the unsophisticated
> user.
> 
> What happens is that when the panel starts up it sets the GNOME_PANEL X
> property on the display where it is running. If another panel starts up
> on the same display, it checks for this property, and if it finds it it
> gives you the usual warning message and refuses to save customizations
> (because it assumes that there is another panel using the config files).
> 
> Unfortunately, if a panel dies unexpectedly, the GNOME_PANEL property
> is not removed; the session manager attempts to respawn a panel, but
> it acts as if there were a panel still present. This needs a redesign,
> along one of the following lines:
> (1) the panel should NEVER crash :-)
> or (2) there must be some better way than the GNOME_PANEL property to
> ensure only one panel per display.
> 

Agreed. This is a pretty fishy way of doing things.

Can't the new panel check to see if something called panel is on the
process list if it finds the GNOME_PANEL property?

ie New panel finds GNOME_PANEL, but no running 'panel' process, and
so it starts up anyway.

Or, if gnome-segv finds that something called 'panel' just dumped
core, it could remove the GNOME_PANEL property itself? The gnome-segv
ustility would be much more useful IMO if it could actually clean up
after dead apps.

[Still getting the hang of Linux programming, so there may be a better
way.]

Tom.
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