X11/MATE problem (ODROID XU4, dual head configuration)

[Priidu]

I have a few XU4s running in dual head mode (i.e. with both the HDMI and Cloudshell LCD enabled). I just wanted to ask if anyone's found a solution for the "doubled everything" problem (i.e. dates, menus etc) on the MATE desktop?

The situation has got quite unbearable for me, since over time, the menus have slowly multiplied and I now have 6(!) repetitions of everything on my desktop .I guess there bound to be a state stored in a file somewhere, since it's able to remember the configuration (e.g. number of repetitions etc) over system reboots. Any ideas?

Edit: For the record, I'm running the stock Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) image off a 32 GB eMMC on both of these ODROIDs.

[Priidu]

OK, so for future reference (since this will probably be useful to other people as well) - I installed dconf-editor (sudo apt-get install dconf-editor), browsed down the registry tree way down into the MATE panel configuration (org > mate > panel > general) and removed all the extraneous entries under the 'object-id-list' key.

So, to begin with, I had something like this stored there:

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['menu-bar', 'notification-area', 'show-desktop', 'window-list', 'workspace-switcher', 'object1', 'object2', 'object3', 'object4', 'clock', 
 'menu-bar', 'notification-area', 'show-desktop', 'window-list', 'workspace-switcher', 'clock',
 'menu-bar', 'notification-area', 'show-desktop', 'window-list', 'workspace-switcher', 'clock',
 'menu-bar', 'notification-area', 'show-desktop', 'window-list', 'workspace-switcher', 'clock',
 'menu-bar', 'notification-area', 'show-desktop', 'window-list', 'workspace-switcher', 'clock',
 'menu-bar', 'notification-area', 'show-desktop', 'window-list', 'workspace-switcher', 'clock']

End result (after removing all the unnecessary stuff):

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['menu-bar', 'notification-area', 'show-desktop', 'window-list', 'workspace-switcher', 'object1', 'object2', 'object3', 'object4', 'clock']

This fixed it for me (no more duplicates on the MATE panels, yay). However, there's a caveat - you might have to do this again once in a while, since after a few reboots I got some duplicates again.
Oh well, at least now there's a way to get rid of them.

[Priidu]

Ok, so here's an even better solution. Since having MATE reset these changes on every reboot gets old real fast, I added the following line to my .bashrc file (in /home/<your-username>):

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gsettings set org.mate.panel object-id-list "['menu-bar', 'notification-area', 'show-desktop', 'window-list', 'workspace-switcher', 'object1', 'object2', 'object3', 'object4', 'clock']"

This overrides the automatic changes that MATE applies on every reboot, effectively solving the problem for good.

PS: Note that the 'objectX' items are just some shortcuts that I have on my MATE panels - you probably won't need to copy these. Also, try running this command in a terminal window first to make sure that everything works and that there are no syntax errors.

[Priidu]

Ok, just on more post (last one, I promise). This approach is also useful if you want to remove the MATE header and footer panels on your Cloudshell LCD (like I did). In that case, you would add another line to your .bashrc file:

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gsettings set org.mate.panel toplevel-id-list "['top', 'bottom']"

Again, use dconf-editor to verify the result and to check that everything works as expected.

IMPORTANT: Notice that I added the commands to the .bashrc file. This is intentional -- turns out MATE does the overwritting AFTER both rc.local and .profile have already been executed. So .bashrc was the only solution I could think of. The obvious downside is that these won't get executed unless you open at least one terminal window.