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After logging in, the desktop appears, and seems to work fine (I can start applications from desktop icons, for example, and right clicking on the desktop area brings up the expected context menu), but there's no menu bar and no dash. How can I fix/diagnose this problem?

This is a very standard clean Ubuntu 11.04 install with only a few fairly standard applications added, such as Chrome, Dropbox and Skype. The only login style that appears to work is "Ubuntu (Safe Mode)"--the two Ubuntu Class styles give the same results as "Ubuntu". I've tried looking in /var/log for messages but there's nothing obvious.

If I create another user account, and login as that user, everything works as expected.

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  • Please give us details on graphic card & driver
    – Takkat
    Apr 29, 2011 at 9:06
  • It's an integrated Intel Graphics card of some sort, neither very old nor very new. How do I find out exactly what it is?
    – mjs
    Apr 29, 2011 at 9:08

1 Answer 1

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The answer turned out to be a ~/.gnome-session which contained

/usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/gnome-session

which must have been necessary at some point in the past, but emphatically isn't now. Once I deleted this file, everything worked as expected.

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  • I cant seem to understand the answer. Would one be more specific, as I encountered the same problem after the upgrade to Naty
    – user15609
    Apr 30, 2011 at 8:57
  • ditto. I can only get it to work in safe mode (classic doesn't work, classic without effects doesn't work, unity 2d doesn't work, but they all worked in the beta!) and even then, I can only get window borders by running metacity in the terminal.
    – Patrick
    Apr 30, 2011 at 18:09
  • I've updated the answer with more information, but for me the answer was to simply delete ~/.gnome-session.
    – mjs
    May 6, 2011 at 13:28

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