I got sufficiently annoyed with Gnome's top panel disappearing and tried to find it's cause.
First, here's how the problem can be reproduced on several up-to-date Debian sarge installations (no packages from external sources): 1) Create a new user without any customised gnome/sawfish/xsession configurations. 2) Start X (either startx or login via gdm) with this user. 3) Debian's default gnome desktop starts fine. 4) Remove metacity from session and replace it with sawfish. 5) Exit saving setting. So far so good, but: 6) Restart / relogin with the same user. 7) Session starts, the top panel flashes on top of the screen (where it should be) and disappears. 8) Creating a new panel and positioning it top doesn't go to top of the screen, but hovers some distance (actually the height of the original top panel) from the edge. The original top panel can actually be found beneath the bottom panel and moved where it should be. 9) If gnome-panel is killed the session management restarts it and the panels reappear positioned correctly. Because of 9) I tried rearranging the sessions start order, moving sawfish and gnome-panel around each other, but it didn't make any difference. After verifying that the problem can be reproduced after removing .gnome* and .sawfish* and starting from 1), I started to limit what to remove. After few iterations I found out that removing the file[1] created in 5) from .sawfish/sessions/ is sufficient -- without it the panels are positioned correctly. With little more tinkering around I also found out that removing the "Bottom Panel" section from the session file is also sufficient -- as is moving it below the "Top Panel" section[2]. So the problem can be worked around by editing .sawfish/session/* but it still reappears each time I exit with saving settings. Any ideas for the real cause? [1] Attached as 'non-working.sawfish-session' [2] Attached as 'working.sawfish-session'
;; session saved for [EMAIL PROTECTED] ;; sawfish version 1.3; Thu Jul 15 01:12:54 2004 ((name . "Desktop") (dimensions 1600 . 1200) (client-id . "11c1a650fe000108869790300000120320003") (role) (class . "desktop_window Nautilus ") (command . "nautilus --screen=0 ") (machine . "airlee") (sticky . t) (fixed-position . t) (sticky-viewport . t) (depth . -4) (type . unframed) (position 0 . 0) (viewport 0 . 0)) ((name . "Bottom Panel") (dimensions 1600 . 42) (client-id . "11c1a650fe000108869790200000120320002") (role) (class . "gnome-panel Gnome-panel ") (command . "gnome-panel --screen=0 ") (machine . "airlee") (sticky . t) (fixed-position . t) (sticky-viewport . t) (depth . 0) (type . unframed) (position 0 . 1158) (viewport 0 . 0)) ((name . "Top Panel") (dimensions 1600 . 27) (client-id . "11c1a650fe000108869790200000120320002") (role) (class . "gnome-panel Gnome-panel ") (command . "gnome-panel --screen=0 ") (machine . "airlee") (sticky . t) (fixed-position . t) (sticky-viewport . t) (depth . 0) (type . unframed) (position 0 . 0) (viewport 0 . 0))
;; session saved for [EMAIL PROTECTED] ;; sawfish version 1.3; Thu Jul 15 01:12:54 2004 ((name . "Desktop") (dimensions 1600 . 1200) (client-id . "11c1a650fe000108869790300000120320003") (role) (class . "desktop_window Nautilus ") (command . "nautilus --screen=0 ") (machine . "airlee") (sticky . t) (fixed-position . t) (sticky-viewport . t) (depth . -4) (type . unframed) (position 0 . 0) (viewport 0 . 0)) ((name . "Top Panel") (dimensions 1600 . 27) (client-id . "11c1a650fe000108869790200000120320002") (role) (class . "gnome-panel Gnome-panel ") (command . "gnome-panel --screen=0 ") (machine . "airlee") (sticky . t) (fixed-position . t) (sticky-viewport . t) (depth . 0) (type . unframed) (position 0 . 0) (viewport 0 . 0)) ((name . "Bottom Panel") (dimensions 1600 . 42) (client-id . "11c1a650fe000108869790200000120320002") (role) (class . "gnome-panel Gnome-panel ") (command . "gnome-panel --screen=0 ") (machine . "airlee") (sticky . t) (fixed-position . t) (sticky-viewport . t) (depth . 0) (type . unframed) (position 0 . 1158) (viewport 0 . 0))
