I've been using xfce4.8 for months, with no changes to the panel settings. Yesterday, upon login, instead of having a single panel along the entire top of the display, populated with panel goodies, what I got was a single small empty panel in the middle of the screen.

Simultaneously, I received a notify-box message "can not open home directory".

I neglected at the time to check /home/optimum/.config/xfce4/panel, but it now looks fine, and I adn't been messng with it prior.


xfce 4.8 / debian wheezy (updated from wheezy repo) / 
xfce4-panel 4.8.6-3