I am scratching my head on this one, a lot of things are still new to me.

I updated 126 packages just now through the update manager, and upon reboot everything works fine except the unity launcher. It's just a dark space. The dash still works, as does the top panel and docky.

When I try:

unity --replace

I end up with this and then an indefinite hang:

(compiz:3689): GConf-CRITICAL **: gconf_client_add_dir: assertion `gconf_valid_key (dirname, NULL)' failed
WARN  2012-09-23 02:18:29 unity.favorites FavoriteStoreGSettings.cpp:139 Unable to load GDesktopAppInfo for 'ubiquity-gtkui.desktop'
WARN  2012-09-23 02:18:30 unity.favorites FavoriteStoreGSettings.cpp:139 Unable to load GDesktopAppInfo for 'ubuntuone-installer.desktop'
ERROR 2012-09-23 02:18:30 unity.launcher.trashlaunchericon TrashLauncherIcon.cpp:62 Could not create file monitor for trash uri: Operation not supported
Initializing unityshell options...done
WARN  2012-09-23 02:18:31 unity.libindicator <unknown>:0 Desktop file '/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-writer.desktop' is using a deprecated format for its actions that will be dropped soon.
WARN  2012-09-23 02:18:31 unity.libindicator <unknown>:0 Desktop file '/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-calc.desktop' is using a deprecated format for its actions that will be dropped soon.
WARN  2012-09-23 02:18:31 unity.libindicator <unknown>:0 Desktop file '/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-impress.desktop' is using a deprecated format for its actions that will be dropped soon.
Setting Update "main_menu_key"
Setting Update "run_key"

Unfortunately I cannot make heads or tails of this. Anyone, please help?