Comment 10 for bug 708624

None of that changed the behavior -- it still crashed on the same line.

What did help was (a) leaving the assignment to sensor_default_settings in place and (b) adjusting the loop just after it:

        # Load settings and replace with defaults if not set.
        for key, value in sensor_default_settings.iteritems():
            if key not in self.applet.settings or len(self.applet.settings[key]) == 0:
                self.applet.settings[key] = value

In gconf-editor, /apps/awn-applet-hardware-sensors/ had every setting value empty -- /usr/share/gconf/schemas/awn-applet-hardware-sensors.schemas defaults /apps/awn-applet-hardware-sensors/labels to [] -- and that was apparently the empty array that caused the crash. With the adjusted loop, the applet starts up and shows three hard-drive temperature sensors. It looks like self.applet.settings is expected to ignore defaulted or unset keys, but I do not know what code implements that.

(You did find the right person on IRC yesterday -- I was AFK most of the day, but I should be around most of today if you want to discuss in real-time. If you would prefer some other network, just let me know where to find you.)