gnome panel crashes and no way to restart it without console

[IsTI37]

The problem persisted when my gnome panel hanged up when I tryed to set the lower panel to hide itself and I could not restart it without console and without restarting X.

Firstly I tried to press Alt+f2 to kill gnome panells and I discovered that it's related to gnome panels because it not worked.

After that I pressed CTRL+ ALT + F1 to enter a console and I logged in. After I wrote in killall gnome-panel, X hanged up (restarted) when I entered back to 7.

X has restarted after I gave the 'shutdown 0' command in 1...

Don't ask why I didn't wanted to restart X. Just I don't wanted.
But it's a little problem which should be fixed. Why gnome panels are crashing and there is no button to restart it ?

My suggestion is to add a refresh command to desktop like in windows. Or somewhere else. But please add a refresh command to get gnome-panels back.

EDIT:
I am using ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy), I have the default applets from installation (nothing else) and the panels turned white when I tried to set the lower panel to hide itself automatically. I could not enter a console because I didn't had a shortcut on my desktop. I didn't checked why it occured, but probabilly other people will have problems with this. I have the drivers installed (Nvidia 173.14.12), I am using compiz... (ccsm set to easy for eyes), I have 1 gb memory and an Intel Celeron 2.53 Ghz Processor.
I checked for the ~/.xsession-errors file but I have to wait until gnome panel crashes again. My desktop and applications were fine. (pidgin,firefox,transmission and screenlets) Only my panels turned white.

Obviously it turned white for me and it hasn't restarted. I wanted to terminate it but I could not terminate it because I didn't had a console to kill it. (That's the main problem)

I hope that in ubuntu 8.10 a refresh command/shortcut will be included to restart gnome-panel.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

* Is this reproducible?
* If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?
* What applets have you added to the panel?

Also, please attach your ~/.xsession-errors file after this problem occurs (don't log out before attaching it, otherwise it won't contain anything useful).

FYI. gnome-panel is respawned automatically by gnome-session if it crashes or you terminate it.

This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Please also specify the Ubuntu version that you are using

[IsTI37 (logistikdesign)]

Added more information :

I am using ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy), I have the default applets from installation (nothing else) and the panels turned white when I tried to set the lower panel to hide itself automatically. I could not enter a console because I didn't had a shortcut on my desktop. I didn't checked why it occured, but probabilly other people will have problems with this. I have the drivers installed (Nvidia 173.14.12), I am using compiz... (ccsm set to easy for eyes), I have 1 gb memory and an Intel Celeron 2.53 Ghz Processor.
I checked for the ~/.xsession-errors file but I have to wait until gnome panel crashes again. My desktop and applications were fine. (pidgin,firefox,transmission and screenlets) Only my panels turned white.

Obviously it turned white for me and it hasn't restarted. I wanted to terminate it but I could not terminate it because I didn't had a console to kill it. (That's the main problem)

(I will update with xsession-errors when it crashes again )

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, your crash report is either missing or challenging to deal with as a ".crash" file. Please follow these instuctions to have apport report a new bug about your crash that can be dealt with by the automatic retracer.

If you are using Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop environment - launch nautilus and navigate to your /var/crash directory and double click on the crash report you wish to submit.

I'm closing this bug report since the process outlined above will automatically open a new bug report which can then dealt with more efficiently. Thanks in advance for your cooperation and understanding.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

If you have trouble getting Apport to generate a crash report, then please try to obtain a backtrace by following the procedure at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Backtrace , and then re-open this bug report by clicking on the current status in the yellow box above, and selecting 'New' from the drop-down box which appears. You should attach a backtrace if you re-open this bug report.

To obtain a backtrace of gnome-panel, you will need to follow the procedure for attaching gdb to an already running process, then perform the necessary steps to recreate the problem.

Thanks