Zombie printer icon remains after printing

[Ian Hilliard]

Using Linux Mint Mate 16 (olivia) on a Lenovo G500S with quad core i5 and 4GB memory.

When printing, the printer icon appears normally in the system tray. Instead of the icon being removed at the end of the print job, it remains as a zombie printer icon in the system tray. It is not possible to remove it without killing the X-session. Further print jobs no longer give the ability to check the status using the icon as this is just a zombie left from the first print job. This happens every time the computer is used to print.

[John Duperon (duperon)]

I also have this problem, using Linux Mint Mate 16.

I have run /usr/bin/system-config-printer-applet --debug and received the following output:

checking for jobs
checking for jobs
Starting job applet
ERROR:dbus.proxies:Introspect error on :1.45:/org/fedoraproject/Config/Printing: dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.
org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

The error comes after the job was printed. While it is printing, it is possible to click on the printer icon and see the print queue. After printing, this error occurs and the icon stays there, unusable. The printer is obviously accessible as the job does print.

I don't see anything of interest in /var/log/syslog. Synaptic says apparmor is not installed on my machine.

It would be really nice to have this functionality back as it has worked well for me for the last few years on other machines without a problem. It feels like a step backwards.

Thanks,

John

[krahim (karim-rahim)]

I have Mate Mint 16 on a lenovo T530 with a i5-3360M with 16 gig ram.

I have the same problem after successful printing to a network printer. This problem does **not** prevent me from printing further documents. In my case the problem is cosmetic.

After printing the first document and observing the zombie icon I start the following:

/usr/bin/system-config-printer-applet --debug
checking for jobs

Then I successfully print another page and:

checking for jobs
Starting job applet
ERROR:dbus.proxies:Introspect error on :1.75:/org/fedoraproject/Config/Printing: dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.
org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

Thanks,

Karim

[Catalin Hritcu (catalin-hritcu)]

Same problem here with fresh install of Mint 16.

[Frank Peelo (f32pnospam)]

I've just done a fresh install of Mint 17 (Qiana) and I think I have the same thing. A little printer icon in the notification area on the right of my task bar, that does nothing if I click or right-click it. It's almost just a cosmetic problem, except that it would be annoying if on future print jobs I won't be able to check the status or print queue.

So whatever this is, it's still there in Qiana.

Now, when I say it was a fresh install, that does not include a fresh home partition. The stuff in there has been accumulating since Mint 12. I have been upgrading with apt instead of doing fresh installs -- would have done the same this time except the in-place upgrading messed up big time and left the computer unbootable. So the OS is a fresh install, but whatever Mate configuration files are there, likely have years of old stuff in them.

Not sure "Zombie" is the right word though, top tells me I have 0 zombie processes (but I supposed they would not be visible anyway).

I get the same message when I tried the system-config-printer-applet thing. Is it possible to kill the applet? ps aux and grepping for fedora shows nothing, neither does grepping for printing. Grepping for printer showed two processes.
Killing /usr/bin/python /usr/share/system-config-printer/applet.py didn't make the icon go away
Killing /usr/bin/python /usr/share/system-config-printer/scp-dbus-service.py did :)

So, could this be the result of an old configuration? Like the previous time I updated my system. That time, Mate started spawning an infinite number of Cajas, and that turned out to be a problem with some file in ~/.mateconf or someplace like that.

I tried grepping ~/.mateconf and ~/.mate2 for scp-dbus-service and didn't find anything.

(Now I wonder did /usr/bin/python /usr/share/system-config-printer/applet.py do anything that I should worry about? I tried printing out another page from LibreOffice, and got a message "Could not start printer". But the page printed ok.)

Frank

[A Brwn (abrwn)]

I can confirm this bug on fresh/clean install of Linux Mint 17 Mate edition. Killing /usr/bin/python /usr/share/system-config-printer/scp-dbus-service.py removed the icon.

[Sven Siewert (9-laxnchpad-8)]

Linux Mint 17 Mate edition, seven fresh installations on different machines (Laptop/Desktop). I can confirm this bug on each machine.

just killing /usr/bin/python /usr/share/system-config-printer/scp-dbus-service.py worked and removed the icon but till the next reboot...

[Chris Hemsing (c-hemsing)]

Same here! Linux Mint Mate 17! Very annoying!
Does anybody care??? More than a half year now ...
Chris

[David (9-launchpad-3)]

Same bug here on my Linux Mint Mate 17. In my case the zombie-icon also has a red "x" in the lower right corner. I am btw also printing via network, and printing is successfull.

[lucacerone (lucacerone)]

Same here on a fresh Linux Mint Mate 17!

[Les (ljmelkvik)]

Same here on Linux Mint Mate 16.

[Jason Currie (jcurrie84)]

Still occurring on Qiana

[Gary Timuss (gary-timuss)]

appears to be a duplicate of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/system-config-printer/+bug/1291075

[A Pagano (apagano24)]

Mint Linux 17.3 Rosa 32 bit
Mate 1.12.0

Issue: My issue is a slight variation of the others reported here. Printer icon becomes a zombie in the notification area only when there is an error of some sort during printing: out of paper (little printer icon with red "x" becomes a zombie), ink low (little printer icon with yellow "!" becomes a zombie). By zombie I mean that there is no context menu available when right or left clicking on the zombie icon. And no informational box pops up when hovering over the zombie icon. This problem is ongoing. Once a zombie icon appears additional printing has no effect on the notification area zombie printer icon. New printer icons don't appear and the zombie never changes. The zombie has no effect on the ability to print. I duplicated the problem on a Laptop running Mint Linux 17.3 64 bit with a wireless connection to the internet and printer. Too much of a novice to try killing processes but a reboot gets rid of the zombie and the printer icon works normally until the next print error is detected.

Conditions: Problem began after a clean install of Mint Linux 17.3 on a desktop computer wired to the network with both a wired and wireless printer. No previous problems with Mint Ver 15.x. I have an unrelated(?) problem with a Network Manager (NM) icon in the notification area which intermittently indicates "no wired network connection" when in fact the wired connection to the internet appears fine (at least as far as my ability to use the web browser is concerned). Unable to duplicate this NM icon problem on a laptop running Mint 17.3 (upgraded to 17.3 from 17.2 using Update Manager) with a wireless connection to the internet.

[calexil (calexil)]

mint 17.3, still happening, print notification icon goes zombie after successful printing instead of disappearing

[calexil (calexil)]

confirming this issue was resolved in mint 18

can be closed