restarting panel not working, unknown depends or dumb user?

[seeker]

Been googling this most of the day and I know there are a bunch of threads already here. I think I've read them all plus a bunch of posts from other fora like mint. But none of the instructions seem to work as expected and I'm wondering if either:

a- something has changed since those posts
or
b- those instuctions depend on something I don't have installed. This is plausible to me because I built this system up from a Ubuntu Precise mini, trying to keep it as lean as possible, and not installing anything I don't use, and I didn't install the entire lxde desktop environment.

Whenever I reboot everything comes back fine. I can kill the panel. Sometimes I can restart it but when I do it comes back with totally different settings which look a lot like the default ones it had before I started tinkering with it to make it more legible. And I can't get lxpanel or lxpanelctl to load a specified profile.

Now as to why I'm doing this -- because maybe YOU (yeah, you there in the Johnson 2012 T shirt) know a better way and would be kind enough to enlighten me -- I like to be able to get the panel out of the way some times because not all aps have well behaved windows and sometimes I need that extra 50 pixels (yes, I broadened the bar). The hide buttons on the gnome panel work pretty well for this, but a keyboard shortcut that toggled visibility of the panel altogether would be even better. Say maybe meta-b to toggle visibility of the bottom panel and meta-t to toggle the top panel, for instance. Actually at the moment I'm just useing a bottom panel but I'll probably try adding a top panel later.

That would be ideal but I can think of several approaches that should work well enough in principle but I haven't gotten any of them to work. Alternates:
1- toggle between 3 profiles: full panel; minipanel flush left with just enough space to hold one button that would restore the full panel; and a similar one flush right.
2- an effective command to kill it alltogether (lol, that part is too easy, bare bodkin so to speak) and another command (and this is the hard part) to resurrect it with the right profile without rebooting.
3- toggle between a full panel and one that is EFFECTIVELY gone because it is only 1 pixel x 1 pixel.

I've tried a lot of approaches using lxpanel -thisthatandtheotheroption and lxpanelctl -stillmorestuff that didn't work as expected so I'm wondering if maybe there is a depends that that didn't get installed or maybe that I wiped out by installing k3b and then uninstalling it and trying to get rid of all the other kde stuff it brought in.

[seppalta]

I'm unable to discern what you do and do not want. So rather than guess, i'll just refer you to http://lxlinux.com/#4 and http://lxlinux.com/tint2.html. Both lxpanel and tint2 can be caliberated to stay below open windows.

[seeker]

Thank you, seppalta. Those are both interesting links. I'll put off investigating tint until I have put more time into getting what I want out of lxpanel. On the first link there is a great deal of lxde information of condiderable interest but the part about lxpanel specifically seems to all be suggestions I've already seen and tried. The main one, to paraphrase, is to bring back a vanished lxpanel with

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lxpanelctl restart

and if that doesn't work, give up on lxpanel and get tint.

Possibly my OP is unclear because I mentioned too many options (any of which would suffice) on how to get the effect I want. So I'll narrow to only one and state the heart of it as simply as possible:

I want a command that will restore the lxpanel with all the tweaks I've made to it after I've killed it.

I'll walk through some attempts as I compose this post:

Trial 1:
There are at least 3 ways to kill the panel, killall, pkill, and lxpanelctl exit. I'll try the last to begin with because I learned it most recently and haven't experimented with it as much. So:

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lxpanelctl exit

ok, the panel went away. Now to try to bring it back:

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lxpanel -p lxpanel-bottom-custom-1

I get this error message:

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** (lxpanel:1525): WARNING **: Config files are not found.

and the terminal emulater doesn't return a prompt. Maybe that's because I have the config file stored where the documention says it should be rather than where I found lxpanel put it.

I'll try again, this time specifying the full path:
Cntrl-z to get a prompt, followed by several attempts to restart the lxpanel including attempts to kill the panel it reports is running, during which no panel was visible at any time:

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^Z
[1]+  Stopped                 lxpanel -p lxpanel-bottom-custom-1
me@ubuntu:~$ 
me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanel -p /home/me/.config/lxpanel/profile/lxpanel-bottom-custom-1
There is already an instance of LXPanel.  Now to exit
me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanelctl exit
me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanel -p /home/me/.config/lxpanel/profile/lxpanel-bottom-custom-1
There is already an instance of LXPanel.  Now to exit
me@ubuntu:~$ pkill lxpanel
me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanel -p /home/me/.config/lxpanel/profile/lxpanel-bottom-custom-1
There is already an instance of LXPanel.  Now to exit
me@ubuntu:~$ killall lxpanel
me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanel -p /home/me/.config/lxpanel/profile/lxpanel-bottom-custom-1
There is already an instance of LXPanel.  Now to exit
me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanelctl restart
me@ubuntu:~$

OK, that last one didn't complain about a running panel. Still no panel visible though.
Let's try with the name lxpanel called the config file when it made it:

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me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanel -p panel
There is already an instance of LXPanel.  Now to exit

Still no panel.

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me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanelctl restart

Nope, no panel. Maybe this:

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me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanelctl -p panel

Nothing. So, I try some more giveing the full path of THAT config file in the (undocumented) directory where lxpanel put it, including attempts to kill hidden panels as needed:

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me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanel -p /home/me/.config/lxpanel/LXDE/panels/panel
There is already an instance of LXPanel.  Now to exit
me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanelctl exit
me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanel -p /home/me/.config/lxpanel/LXDE/panels/panel
There is already an instance of LXPanel.  Now to exit
me@ubuntu:~$ killall lxpanel
me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanel -p /home/me/.config/lxpanel/LXDE/panels/panel
There is already an instance of LXPanel.  Now to exit
me@ubuntu:~$ pkill lxpanel
me@ubuntu:~$ lxpanel -p /home/me/.config/lxpanel/LXDE/panels/panel
There is already an instance of LXPanel.  Now to exit
me@ubuntu:~$

Darned if I know what to make of all this. Somehow I did manage to customise the lxpanel and the changes I made are stored in a text file, /home/me/.config/lxpanel/LXDE/panels/panel , that I can open in a text editor and confirm it is indeed the lxpanel custom config. Right now I seem to be having the devil's own time trying to restart the lxpanel at all but I have been able to do so following past episodes of panelcidal rage and when I do it always comes back in what I guess must be the default form, skinny with tiny fonts and somebody's idea of a cutesypoo background image. If there is a config file for that default somewhere I could overwrite with my custom config it would solve half the problem. Anyway, I'm going to rename my custom panel config file in the DOCUMENTED directory now (where I copied it to from the UNDOCUMENTED directory and renamed it) to something with only lower case letters and also copy that back to the UNDOCUMENTED directory in case the problem is either the name or location of the custom config file and then reboot so as to get back my panel and restore a ground state so to speak before I do any more experimenting.

[seppalta]

Excuse me if I missed it, but have you said that after you have the panel the way you want it, it does not come back the way you had it ON THE NEXT BOOT when you haven't killed it or done any experimenting inbetween?

[seeker]

No, it always comes back fine after rebooting. When I right click on the panel, click panel settings, make some adjustment, and click the close button, the changes I make are reflected in the text file /home/me/.config/lxpanel/LXDE/panels/panel and whatever is in that file is what I get on reboot. What I can not get it to do is come back with those settings after killing it WITHOUT rebooting.

[seppalta]

I think kill procedures are operations of last resort. It is probably the case that only a reboot restores normality after a kill.