"Restart" is missing from the system menu

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Problem occurs in: indicator-session 12.10.5daily13.03.08-0ubuntu1, Ubuntu R
Does not occur in: Ubuntu 12.10

1. Open the system menu.

What you see: "Log Out...", "Suspend", and "Shut Down..." items.

What you should see: A "Restart..." item between "Suspend" and "Shut Down...".
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SystemMenu>

This is a regression of bug 815077. In 2011 we thought it might be a good idea to demote "Restart" to an extra button in the "Shut Down" dialog, but we were wrong. So we moved it back to a top-level item in the system menu.

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

I discussed this with JohnLea when implementing the new dialogs in Ubuntu and we thought that it was fine to hide the restart option when in unity mode since both would have lead to the same view.
So I think you should discuss about this.

[Doug McMahon (mc3man)]

Doesn't the comment here - "Note: As the new shutdown dialogues contain a 'reboot' option, this option should be removed from the session indicator menu." imply there should be no "restart" option in indicator?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/882041

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Doug, that comment is from 2011, and I addressed it in the original report. We demoted "Restart" to the Shut Down dialog in Ubuntu 11.10, to reduce clutter in a "device menu" laden with items for printers, scanners, and webcams. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DeviceMenuAndUserMenu?action=recall&rev=19#Session_section> That was a mistake, and when we removed the device items, we restored "Restart" to a top-level menu item in 12.04.

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

Matthew, actually it was not, the bug description was updated by John Lea on 2013-03-07 to define that case.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Matthew, I'm reading the system menu specification and I'm not sure what the correct behaviour is when selecting "Restart..." and "Shut Down...". Do we still open a confirmation dialog (implied by the "...")? What does the dialog show?

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

What always blocked me to do this in unity (as I never found the time to fix things in gnome upstream), is the missing support for a "Reboot" method call in gnome session dbus api that would generate a org.gnome.SessionManager.EndSessionDialog.Open signal with an ID for such kinds of dialogs... :/

As currently it just return the same ID that we have for shutdown... This thing would make has harder (for example) to select the default action for easier key-activation.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Robert, yes, the ellipsis is because it opens a dialog. The restart dialog should show the equivalent of the shutdown dialog: "Are you sure you want to close all programs and restart the computer?"

Remember that the menu item is not the only UI element that triggers this dialog: it's also invoked by Software Updater after updates that require a restart, and by the "Additional Drivers" tab of Software & Updates settings when you make driver changes. So just removing the menu item wouldn't remove the need for a Restart dialog to exist.