icewm tray icons disappear | workaround given in post

[bill]

Binary package hint: icewm

icewm ver 1.2.33 (the standard one for Hardy) has problems with tray icons. When running something like pidgin (formerly gaim) or Amarok the application is supposed to go to the tray when it has been minimized. Currently the tray often disappears ... the programs are still running as verified by ps ax | grep amarok or ps ax | grep pidgin. This is a documented bug (see its mention in http://ge.ubuntuforums.com/showthread.php?t=263710&page=34 post # 337).

Here is a workaround that works for me: Make a backport from intrepid (the Ubuntu version currently in development). Here are the steps to make
a deb for 1.2.35 version in order to solve the problems with the tray. You can make a "backport" deb from intrepid (the next version of Ubuntu coming out ... it has 1.2.35 ... see http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/icewm).

To make a backport follow the directions at

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=268687

Note:

- You can just install prevu with sudo apt-get install prevu

- Note line 2 when the author mentions changing souces.list -- in this case it should read "intrepid" where that one reads "feisty" (You make a back port from the next new version of Ubuntu ... at the time that was written fiesty was the new one!)

- After (or before) you create your backport deb remove all versions of icewm ... to see which ones type "dpkg -l | grep icewm", then sudo apt-get remove {package name}

- Install the new debs which will be in /var/cache/prevu/hardy-debs -- you can install them with this command:

sudo dpkg -i {name of new deb}

I had four to install: icewm, icewm-experimental, icewm-gnome and icewm-common ... icewm-common had to be installed first.

Note: I had ver 1.2.33 already installed. I just exited icewm, at the gnome (gdm) login screen clicked on "selected session" logged back in using the gnome interface, then when to a terminal and installed the packages. I ran update-menus again just to be safe -- this generates the menu list for gdm -- exited gnome and logged in again this time using icewm. No problems. If you want to check the version of icewm you are running at the command line type "icewm --version". Yo might be able to do all this while still in icewm, but it struck me as a bad idea to change the program while I was using the program :-)

As always with a backport you are on your own and you can break your system. I just did this yesterday and icewm appears to work fine.

[Andrew Starr-Bochicchio (andrewsomething)]

As this is fixed in the current release, I'm marking as "fix released" and opening a specific task for Hardy.

[Andrew Starr-Bochicchio (andrewsomething)]

The best route on this might be just getting it backported to Hardy officially as it builds for the reporter in prevu. Opening a Hardy Backports task.

[Gabriel Rota (gabriel-rota)]

prevu icewm/intrepid
ll /var/cache/prevu/hardy-debs/icewm_1.2.35-1ubuntu1~8.04prevu1_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install icewm
icewm --replace
sudo apt-get remove icewm
all ok