Problem: Lost window borders and workspaces. Inability to click options in pop-up menus.
Solution: Clear the session cache.
After shutting down my PC to move to the other side of the table before booting it up again I discover to my frustration that my beautiful Fedora 16 Xfce desktop has become a pile of dren (if you haven't noticed yet I'm a Farscape fan).In addition I couldn't click and pop-up menus as they would disappear when hovered upon, as well as all my workspaces save for the first being gone as well.
I googled for quite some time reading various information on console commands and configuration settings in packages I don't even have installed(!)
Finally I find this, the wonderful solution:
- Open up a terminal and go root if needed ("su root" or "sudo" if you have it set up). navigate to /home/[Username]/.cache (this is a hidden folder).
You could also open up the folder within the window manager if you prefer working with GUI's (use Ctrl+H to display hidden folders).
$ cd /home/[Username]/.cache
(remember to replace [Username] with your actual username.)
- Then simply delete all the files within that folder ("rm -rf *" ftw).
$ rm -rf *
(this is one of the most DANGEROUS commands in Linux and should be used with EXTREME caution as it will delete ALL your files in the current location without prompting you at any time after you press enter.)
- Now just reboot your system (make sure to uncheck the remember session option just in case). Relogging might work as well but I felt safer doing a full reboot.
There it is. Hopefully it'll help someone else. Apologies to the original discoverer as I lost the link to the forums where this solution was posted. I'll keep a look out and update this blog entry with a link to the aforementioned forum thread if I find it again.
Update Monday, May 14 2012
The solution above describes how you clear your entire cache. To only clear your sessions cache (which should be enough to solve this issue); delete ONLY the files within the "sessions" folder that resides within the ".cache" folder instead of removing all contents from the ".cache" folder.
