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Problem summary: I installed Cinnamon and after a few restarts and configuration changes the panel does not respond anymore, same for the notification pop-ups. Seems like the desktop got the keyboard/mouse focus, as right-clicking opens the pop-up from the desktop.

I have Ubuntu 14.10 32bit on an older laptop (Intel Core 2 T7200 @ 2Ghz x 2, 2GB RAM, nVidia GeForce Go 7400 (partially defect)) and installed Cinnamon a few days ago.

First it worked fine and I started messing around with its settings. After a restart the panel did not response anymore. No hovering, no click-actions, right-clicking shows the desktop's popup-menu. I also see the notification popup for running in software rendering mode which is ok because of my lightly fried graphics card, but it also doesn't respond on clicks (it should close, but it remains above all other windows). I can launch apps by typing Alt+F2 or using desktop symbols, they run well and even appear in the panel.

I already tried uninstalling, resetting with gsettings reset-recursively org.cinnamon, reinstalling etc. but it always hangs directly after logon.

I remember having activated the CPU Frequency Tool (don' know the name) and System Load Indicator 0.4 (indicator-multiload) before the error occured. Could one of these have created the error? I read Cinnamon is incompatible with Compiz - does one of these use this? I already deactivated them as autostart, but no success.

What might be the cause of this bug? How can I fix this?

Thank you for your ideas!

Byte Commander
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  • concerned on the edits, here's the reason why greetings and thanks are deleted: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts – leighton Jan 12 '15 at 11:52
  • What do you mean with this comment? I don't understand. I can't see anybody greeting or thanking... – Byte Commander Jan 12 '15 at 21:26
  • check the editing record. – leighton Jan 12 '15 at 23:50
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    Sorry, I'm new to this site as you can see. If you people don't want this simple extra line I'll try to avoid being polite... A bit, maybe. But I would rather appreciate somebody answering my question by solving my problem instead of censoring maybe unneeded lines of courtesy out of my questions. Thanks! – Byte Commander Jan 13 '15 at 11:36
  • After deleting all config files about cinnamon in ~/ and performing apt-get purge cinnamon*, as well as with autoremove, autoclean and clean, I created another new admin user as @terdon advised me to do. Then I reinstalled it from within this user and logged out and back into this new user with Cinnamon as DE. AND IT WORKED! The new user has a fully functional panel and responding popups. Logging into my old user after that, I still had the same problem there. – Byte Commander Jan 19 '15 at 18:54

1 Answers1

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This is more of a "workaround" then a "solution"...

As your user profile has some problem somewhere, it's just better to leave it behind!

Do the following:

  1. sudo adduser newuser

  2. Add the user to the right groups (Below are the standard groups for an admin user. To get the user groups for the old user type: groups olduser)

    sudo adduser user2 adm 
sudo adduser user2 cdrom
sudo adduser user2 sudo
sudo adduser user2 dip
sudo adduser user2 plugdev
sudo adduser user2 lpadmin
sudo adduser user2 sambashare

Now, log in as "newuser" and:

  1. open the file manager
  2. browse to the /home/olduser directory
  3. copy (not move!) all the files from Downloads to /home/newuser/Downloads
  4. check you did a good job.
  5. Go back to step 3 and repeat for Documents, Videos, ...

The only thing now still remaining it to delete the old user and its files:

sudo deluser olduser --remove-home
A.B.
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Fabby
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  • Some questions about this: (a) how to find out all groups I currently am a member of in order to set all of them on the new account? or is there a way of directly copying them to avoid typing this 20 times... (b) what do you mean by "guest session"? guests can't sudo, can they? (c) does copying the files require root permissions? (d) so I can copy all of my personal data inside the folders not starting with a "."? Might it be a good idea to keep the other files in another location as backups, to eventually get back some programs' settings? (e) Must I kill the old user or can I go on using it? – Byte Commander Jan 20 '15 at 11:09
  • a) corrected. thanks for the heads-up. b) Corrected c) No d) That's 2 questions in 1 item: Yes and maybe e) That's up to you! I would kill it! :P – Fabby Jan 20 '15 at 11:21
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    Okay, thank you. It still is not a solution (which would be to make the old user work with Cinnamon - if somebody knows another thing I could try, please tell!), but now I think you worked hard enough for these tiny 15 points of rep... ;D Greetings. – Byte Commander Jan 20 '15 at 11:32