No launcher and menu bar on ubuntu 16.04

Question

There is no launcher, menu bar and dash on my ubuntu 16.04. Happened when I logged in. Didn't do any changes to the system on my previous session. 16.04 has been working fine for me since it was released.

I know this has been answered before and I tried these answers:

Launcher, menubar and window borders disappeared in Ubuntu 16.04

Launcher disappeared

I first did a reset of .config/dconf but that didn't do it.

Edit:

Reinstalled Unity - no success
Disabled/Enabled Unity-plugin in Compiz-config-settings manager - no success

The icon for the Unity plugin in Compiz-config-settings manager looks like a question mark. Doesn't seem to look like that when I google images of the settings manager. Guess something is wrong with the plugin.

Solution 1

I had the same problem. Out of the blue the launcher, menu bar and window had disappeared. Other users of the same installation had no problems, so it had to be a user configuration problem. I tried several of the mentioned solutions, but only this one worked:

mv ~/.cache/compizconfig-1 ~/.cache/compizconfig-renamed
shutdown -r 0

After that the controls came back after logging in and I resized the buttons in the launcher again.

Solution 2

Have you tried reinstalling Unity?

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install unity
sudo reboot

Solution 3

compiz-settings may do some desktop launcher disappearance with or without changing system settings, specially when you enable some cube engines that requires to disable some general requirements for your desktop environment.

meaning maybe there is no error , just edited configurations.

note : sometimes it happens when you suddenly shutdown your system.

1. can you provide us with your xorg and xserver in the user home log ?
2. run Ubuntu 16.04 terminal and run compiz-settings :

right-click on desktop + open terminal

then write in terminal :

ccsm

try to disable what you did and let us know please.

hints : in ccsms goto :

1. desktop -> enable Ubuntu unity plugins
2. uncategorized -> enable unity grab handles

Comments

[riwid]

Tried that without success. I also enabled/disabled the unity plugin compiz-config-settings-manager without sucess.

[riwid]

Seems that the unity plugin doesn't work. The unity plugin icon in compiz-config settings manager looks like a question mark. When I write unity in a terminal I can see the menubar flickering on top before it dissapears again. (The above of-course means that I managed to install compiz-config-settings manager).

[user3435407]

it helped me! thx

[Thush-Fdo]

This saved my day. Any idea why this has happened in the first place??? Any update cause this???

[tparker]

Can confirm that none of the solutions in this thread, this one, or this one worked, but this solution did.

[akgola]

Thanks,its working perfect and prevent us to format the system :)

[Pototo]

Win's method worked for me

[Rajesh Chaudhary]

sudo apt-get update worked for me.

[Nick Bedford]

This fixed it for me too.

[Jumogehn]

It helped me for my jetson TX2 ubuntu 16.04

[BharathRao]

Thank you so much. This worked for me in ubuntu 16.04 LTS