Empathy GUI does not start

[George White]

In the amd64 version of the daily Raring Ringtail iso (20130103), the Empathy GUI does not start from the message system tray icon or launching it from the Unity Dash.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: empathy 3.6.2-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.7.0-7.15-generic 3.7.0
Uname: Linux 3.7.0-7-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.7-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Jan 4 11:14:10 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-01-04 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Alpha amd64 (20130103)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: empathy
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Bilal Shahid (s9iper1)]

thanks for taking time in filing the bug to make ubuntu better
can you reproduce it ?
if so than define the steps tp reproduce it?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for empathy (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Harald Held (hheld)]

I just did a clean install of raring and also observed that the empathy GUI does not come up. This seems to be connected with the option '-h', which is how I put it into the autostart list. Without '-h' it opens as expected but, of course, also when you log in - which I would like to avoid.

[Dev (deviskec)]

Same problem for me here. After upgrading to 13.04 64-bit "empathy -h" does not show the GUI.

[Jason Robinson (jaywink)]

Can confirm this here too. Did not realize it was related to the -h option until I found this bug - I thought it was broken for Raring until launch day came :) I also have -h in startup apps and removing it + logging out and back helped.

Attaching ubuntu-bug export for empathy.

[Jason Robinson (jaywink)]

Btw, empathy-debugger dies with segmentation fault a second after launching.

[Rikard (rikard-d)]

This bug affects me to. Also, when someone initiates a chat, the conversation window freezes seemingly at random. Had no problems before the upgrade.

[Vincas Dargis (talkless)]

I have installed libcairo2-dbg and checked that empathy-debugger crash that jaywink noted:

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
composite_aligned_boxes (boxes=0x7fffffffc150, extents=0x7fffffffc570,
    compositor=0x7fffefe5f3a0 <compositor.16156>)
    at /build/buildd/cairo-1.12.14/src/cairo-traps-compositor.c:1276

[Sean Fitzpatrick (sean-fitzpatrick)]

I'm also seeing this. I've always used empathy -h in my startup applications so I'd be signed in in the background - I'd forget to sign in otherwise, but I also didn't want it popping up every time I signed in. In the past it would sign you in and then you could get the contacts list to pop up by clicking on the empathy icon in the email/chat indicator icon. Now with empathy -h the program seems to be running in the background, but there's no way to bring up the contacts list - trying to run empathy from the dash, terminal indicator icon, etc all fail. The only way I can get it to run is to first run "killall empathy" and then relaunch.

[Walter Garcia-Fontes (walter-garcia)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 1179180, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.