I've managed to lose my gnome control panel completely. The situation survived an upgrade from 7.1 to 7.3 (all settings retained, including the missing panel)

I'm guessing there's some keyboard trick to this, but I don't know it.

There probably is. In KDE the "windows" key is used to control the K menu. Have you tried maybe using the Shift + > keys and such.

That sucks that even an upgrade didn't fix it. I will check it out and get back to ya.

I have had that happen, too. For me, the easiest thing to do, just type, in a terminal, panel & and it should restart. Now, let's hope you haven't lost your .gnome settings. HTH, Ray

I'd second posterboy on this one. I've had problems with Gnome Panel crashing in RH 7.x

First, check to see if panel is running with :
ps -elf | grep panel

and you should see something like :
000 S robreeves 6587 1 0 75 0 - 2268 schedu May30 ? 00:00:15 panel --sm-client-id 104c3d18e8000102264823100000027760009

000 R robreeves 12968 12669 0 75 0 - 440 - 09:33 pts/2 00:00:00 grep panel

If you don't have the first one, then panel isn't running. type panel& at a terminal to start it again. If it IS running, try killing it and restarting it.

Hasta.

Sure 'nuff - panel was not running - gnome monitor was - so it was easy to check.

Restarted in a terminal as u recommended - panel& - and all seems well. Settings preserved.

Thanx

OK - I thought all was well, but, after a reboot or logout, the panel does not return.

Can anyone tell me which startup file the "panel &" command belongs in ?

(OK - I know that's terrible English - one should never a preposition end a sentence with)