lost title bar (ubuntu 7.10 w/ compiz)

[Paul Unger]

Things have suddenly gone waaay south with my display settings. Somehow a window took over the screen, by which I mean I can no longer see the "Ubuntu Bars" on top and bottoms (sorry--I don't know what they're called . . . the ones with Applications | Places | Preferences, etc. across the top and the four 'desktops' in the lower right). Luckily, I had two windows open, one of which was minimised. I alt tabbed to it and the top & bottom bars came back. I searched and found this which recommended typing 'metacity' in a terminal. This worked, after a fashion . . . I got my title bars back, but I lost two 'desktops' (out of 4), which killed desktop cube (I've tried setting desktops back to 4 in Advanced Desktop Effects to no effect), and wobbly windows, etc. are not working. So, on a whim, I typed 'compiz' in the terminal, which seemed to restart compiz (i.e., 4 desktops, rotating cube, wobbly windows all worked) but the terminal does not return to "paul@paul-T61:~$" and when I close the terminal the display settings revert to 'last-known-bad'. Is there any hope of getting this working again?

[EarloftheWest]

I have the Compiz Fusion Icon installed on my Hardy system and it allows me to reload and change windows managers on the fly. I've set it to start up automatically when I login.
Is it available for 7.10?

[Paul Unger]

I don't see a compiz fusion icon anywhere . . . The only way I know to access it is in System -> Preferences -> Advanced Desktop Effects Settings. But things are fairly solid in Hardy? This is about the third time I've lost title bars, etc., and it's getting a bit frustrating. I restarted Ubuntu and I have the rotating cube with four desktops again, but no matter what application I have open on which desktop (and they are all on different desktops), they all appear stacked up on the first desktop in the desktop chooser in the bottom right corner. Desktops 2, 3, and 4 are always 'empty' down there . . . Weird.

[EarloftheWest]

Paul,
You'll want to add the Compiz Fusion Icon from Symantec (SP?) and then it should be on the applications menu under Other? Somewhere on there (I'm on Windows now.)
If you set your appearance effects to none, when you login, compiz is turned off but you can quickly enable it with the icon.
Let me know if this works.

[bobbarker]

If you're in a pinch, hit Alt+F2 and type "metacity --replace" and that should restore gnome to normalcy. I think to bring in compiz effects you can just do a "compiz --replace" (or is it "compiz-fusion --replace"?). I get the same problem with my X31

[Landshark]

This is probably too obvious, but I recently had similar problems when installing Dual Head. I finally realized that the tool bars were there but that the new resolution pushed them off the top and bottom of the monitor. But I was scratching my head for a while...

[Paul Unger]

I think this is deeper than screen resolution. As I said, even the virtual 'desktops' aren't entirely cooperating. I can open different apps on different desktops and ctrl+alt+l/r arrow through them, but in the lower right corner (where four mini desktops appear) only the first has anything on it . . . Downloading the Heron as I type, so perhaps a clean install will set it right.

[EarloftheWest]

Paul,

I reread your thread and I have been having the same problem occasionally in hardy when I use compiz.

There is a compiz settings application that you can install from the repositories (compiz appearance?) and it calls the portion that disappears a window decoration.

When I'm running compiz, my windows open on the upper left of the screen without the window decoration. so I can't minimize, maxamize close from the window.

I've been leaving it turned off.