Icons missing from panel.(SOLVED)

[Howard]

After a certain amount of experimentation to try to familiarise myself with the operation of the panel I seem to have lost a couple of icons from the right hand side, next to the clock and volume control.  First it was the wifi network info icon, and now I notice that although skype works its icon doesn't appear either so I cannot adjust either of these items.  How do I get them back?

I've compared all of the panel settings with another installation where they do show up and cannot see any difference.

[Neal ManBear]

Howard,
Remember, we're not there; we can not see which DE you're using; we have no idea what steps you took to produce these results, nor what steps you have taken to resolve it. You must supply this information. Please give details.

[Howard]

Sorry, I thought you'd realise it was LXDE as that's what all my postings have been about lately.

I have no real idea what caused this, I've just been exploring all the options, basically to see what they do.  It has only happened since a recent update, and other strange things are happening too.  The icons in the applications launch bar appear with a white square background on the blue strip, when the background in appearance is set at Image with background.png.  If I switch to "solid colour with opacity" there is a transparent background, and if I switch back to image as above I the white squares do not re-appear - until I log on next time.

I haven't tried to fix my missing icons problem as I don't know enough.  As I said I checked everything in the "panel preferences" comparing with an installation that doesn't have the problem on another computer, and it all seems the same.

At first I thought LXDE was for me, I liked its simplicity, but I am having rather a lot of problems.  My main justification was that you need people like me to really test its robustness!  But, I am thinking of going back to KDE3.5 as my default installation on this computer as I am spending too much time trying to get LXDE to work.  If I don't stop soon I'll miss my plane tomorrow.

[Neal ManBear]

Thought that you were using LXDE but needed to be sure.
While you said a lot in your post, you didn't really tell me anything of what you actually did.

Okay, so we'll try anyway.
First - have you rebooted since this happened? Often a reboot will correct such issues.
Second - have you tried reinstalling lxpanel?
And if neither of those works --
Third - post your ~/.config/lxpanel/LXDE/panels/panel  and /.config/lxpanel/LXDE/config files.

[Howard]

I've rebooted dozens of times. Now re-installed lxpanel and rebooted - no change.  Same problem in my wife's untouched account.

See attachments

[Neal ManBear]

My panel file ends with

Plugin {
    type = launchbar
    Config {
        Button {
            id=/usr/share/applications/lxde-logout.desktop
        }
    }
}

Your panel file continues with

Plugin {
    type = space
    Config {
        Size=2
    }
}

Plugin {
    type = space
    Config {
        Size=2
    }
}

Try removing these 2 plugin entries, save, exit, logout and login.

[Howard]

Thanks Neal.  That did it.  I hope you understand why, I certainly don't!

However, this has given rise to another question about dragging files from one PCman window to another, q.v.

[Neal ManBear]

Thanks Neal.  That did it.  I hope you understand why, I certainly don't!

However, this has given rise to another question about dragging files from one PCman window to another, q.v.

You can't add 2 separators (spaces) at the end like that. Add them somewhere in the body of the panel, if you must.

[Howard]

It wasn't deliberate Neal.  I can't think of anything I did that caused it, any experimental changes I made were in the middle.  Anyway, thanks!