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So I'm testing Natty, and Compiz keeps crashing on me. I expect this sort of thing from alpha software, of course, but it doesn't always give me the option to restart compiz, and for some reason doesn't have a fallback WM configured. Without a window manager, all my programs are still running, but they're not accepting input from the keyboard, and I can't switch between them. I can, however, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and get a terminal, and I can killall Xorg to reset everything, but I'd rather just reset compiz if possible. If I try typing compiz --replace there in the tty, it complains "fatal--couldn't open display." Is there a way to have tty1 restart compiz? Like compiz --replace --display=something?

Additionally, is there a way to configure a fallback window manager so that there's an easier way to recover from compiz crashing?

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You should start accepting answers. So far you've asked 8 questions but haven't accepted any answers. – michaelms Mar 22 '11 at 0:59
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2 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

Switch to terminal number 1 (control-alt-F1) and run 

DISPLAY=:0 unity --replace

or

DISPLAY=:0 compiz --replace

Sometimes it doesn't restart; Just kill all compiz processes and try again in case.

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it says 'DISPLAY:=:' command not found! did I miss something? – Reda Lazri Mar 26 '11 at 20:53
Latest unity starts itself on DISPLAY=:0 automatically. – Owais Lone Apr 16 '11 at 17:31
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up vote 6 down vote

You need to set the DISPLAY environment variable, in the usual case of a single Xorg instance you can do that with

export DISPLAY=":0.0"
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