[Fix] Metacity vs gnome-panel shadow race
Using the classic desktop with metacity on Ubuntu 11.04, I got sick of having to reload metacity every time I logged in just so gnome-panel would get a nice drop shadow from metacity’s compositing manager. This post contains a really quick fix to make the shadow work and get the panel to look pretty again!
This is my temporary workaround for this bug: LP #269670
As root, create a new file in /usr/bin named something remember-able along the lines of metacity. I chose /usr/bin/metashitty. Open it up in your favorite editor, as root, and paste the following short script and save it:
#!/bin/bash sleep 1 # Let gnome-panel have 1 second to register metacity $* &
Next, give the script executable privileges:
sudo chmod 775 /usr/bin/metashitty
Now run gnome-session-properties from a terminal or by pressing Alt+F2, press Add and in the Command text field, enter the following:
metashitty --replace
And then press save and close the window. (You can give it a title and description if you wish)
Now if you log out and back in, the shadow should appear below the gnome-panel. If it doesn’t, you need to increase the number after sleep in the script we wrote earlier. Increase it by 1 each time until the shadow appears as soon as you log in. If the shadow appears too late, you need to decrease the number.
Resulting drop shadow on the top panel
