I lost my panel/taskbar

[Derek Broughton]

Yesterday, I dist-upgraded a humungous number of packages and now the panel 
has disappeared from the bottom of my desktop.  This isn't too much of a 
problem if I'm using the laptop directly, I can use alt-tab to get between 
windows and the Win key to get to the K Menu, but it's a real pain when I'm 
accessing it via VNC, as I am now, where I've never found a way to simulate 
either of those two operations.  Every time I minimize a window, it's gone!  
I can't get back to it.

Running kcontrol to get to the panel & taskbar settings hasn't helped.  I've 
turned off auto-hiding, tried to move the panel around.  Nothing brings it 
back.  Hitting the Win key to bring up the menu still doesn't show the panel.

Any ideas?  Fixes for the panel or alternate key sequences for VNC are both 
welcome.
-- 
derek