How do I restore a 'panel' in Ubuntu?

I generally use the following:

gconftool-2 --shutdown && rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel && pkill gnome-panel

Please notice this will also reset the other panels. You can't restore one single panel.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

It turns out that what was missing was the 'Notification area' - which itself contains various icons - rather than a whole panel (which explains why several icons disappeared when I clicked 'Remove from panel').

When I re-added this via 'Add to panel' all my missing stuff reappeared (Dropbox, Gmail notifier, battery meter etc).

I did this, too, and found this answer here:

Type this in terminal: sudo dpkg-reconfigure ubuntu-desktop

I personally think this is a giant usability problem - removing the panel should be a lot harder to do by mistake.