network-manager, missing icon on the system tray or notification area after switching to a different user

[ross sumera]

Bug on Network Manager - [intrepid]
 Missing icon on the system tray or notification area after switching to a different user (fast user switching).

Here is the scenario:

user1 freshly login from a newly cold-booted system.
 Network-Manager work as normal.

user1 switch to user2 account
 Network-Manager icon missing on the system tray or notification area

now, user1 want to closed or logout totally the backgrounded session.

user2 would login back on the GDM to open his previous session.
 There is no way to see or control the status of the Network-Manager on this session.

network-manager_0.7~~svn20081008t224042-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb
network-manager-gnome_0.7~~svn20081012t133407-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

I confirm the problem. Scenario shows up on my system exactly as described here.

[Craig Hewetson (craighewetson-deactivatedaccount)]

I experience exactly the same problem. Its annoying easily reproducible.

My wife wants me to install windoze because of this. and thats not an option.

Its seems the easiest workaround is to restart the machine and login with that account.

Importance of this bug?

[Ben McCann (ben-mccann)]

I've been fighting with NetworkManager with the problem that it runs but doesn't show up in the system tray. Actually, its there but it has a 1x1 icon which is a bitch to find, but, if you find it, it works. (Alex, I posted a similar complaint to bug 282835 last month). I found this bug and one other this evening that hinted that the missing icons can be repaired by creating a different user account

I tried that and indeed the network manager icon's are present in the system tray in the newly created user account.

Something is awry in my main (and preferred) user account. Has anyone found a solution to this problem? It appears nm-applet can't find the required icon files but I have no idea how to prove or fix that. I found one bug (that I can't find again) that said something about upgrades from Hardy to Intrepid loosing because version 0.6 of the network manager were located or named differently than icons in version 0.7.

[Ben McCann (ben-mccann)]

Following up on yesterday's comment...

I started customizing an alternate user account in the hope that I could migrate my stuff from one user name to another just to get around this bug. (If you can fix the bug, then work-around it).

During the course of configuring the desktop for that new account, the damn NetworkManager icon minimized back to a 1x1 invisible image again. So, at least for me, I have no work-around (via moving accounts) and no visable network manager icon.

For what its worth, I am running Xubuntu 8.10 with XFCE4 and it is fully up to date according to Synaptic.

The customizations I made to my desktop included (in roughly this order):

* Move every component on Panel 2 to Panel 1.

* Remove Panel 2.

* Move Panel 1 from the top of the screen to the right side.

* Disable titles in the Launchers to reduce panel width.

* Change the window manager theme to 'microcurve'.

* Add a new launcher (for Thunderbird).

I logged out and back in between my two user accounts as I checked on settings in the old account and moved them to the new account. During one of those logout/login cycles the Network Manager icon disappeared.

Note that I did *not* try any shortcuts like copying files from ~/.config in one account to the other.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Ben McCann (ben-mccann)]

This isn't a problem in NetworkManager. I finally found the right bug that describes the behavior *and* which offers a viable work-around. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-panel/+bug/139424 (Bug #139424).

The issue is that icon scaling in the System Tray doesn't work well if the Panel is vertical instead of horizontal. The icons can be brought back by moving the panel to the top or bottom of the screen and then moving it back to vertical.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thanks for helping with this bug.
Is everyone experiencing this running Xubuntu?
Are your panels vertical or horizontal?

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

Hi Charlie, I experience it running Ubuntu. My Panel is horizontal.

[sammy7 (i-okk)]

Im running Jauntry (9.04) and confirm have the same problem.

Essentially the user that first logis into Gnome from cold start, is the user that can see/access the icos. All subsequent users logging in, have the icon disappearing from the top panel.

The only way to get is back, log out of all users, then log back in using mine, only then do i see the icon re-appearing.

[Brian (bbadgley)]

I can confirm this bug still exists in karmic beta, running 64-bit with a horizontal top panel. I only have one user, but for me it will go wonky after locking the screen and logging back in. Sometimes the icon is missing, but sometimes it will actually use the wrong icon. For example, right now I have two volume icons in the notification area. One works correctly for the volume control, but the other one does not give me access to network manager.

[GonzO (gonzo)]

I can confirm that this exists in Karmic final.

[GonzO (gonzo)]

Edit: Removing the notification area, and re-adding it, is a workaround.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since I believe this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu and Xubuntu better!

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

GonzO: After removing the notification area and re-adding it, does it continue to work? Or, do you have to do this each time you change users and/or restart? Thanks for helping with this.

[GonzO (gonzo)]

I have to do this every time I restart on this particular computer.

Sometimes, I get two volume icons; sometimes, a volume icon and a space where the NM icon _should_ be. In the latter case, it appears the NM icon is actually a transparent 1x1 pixel - if I hunt for it (takes a few minutes) I can click on the sweet spot and actually get the NM menus.

[Craig Hewetson (craighewetson-deactivatedaccount)]

Ok now that i have installed karmic, this problem was the same behaviour as described by GonzO's last comment. (#14).
When I installed karmic I was on a wired network and there was no problem with the nm-applet showing an icon, even after a restart but when I got home I restarted without a ethernet cable plugged in and I got 2 volume icons (one of them was unresponsive to mouse clicks) and the nm-applet icon didn't show at all.

The only way to get it to show is to log out and log back in again. Restarting the laptop doesn't fix it.

Geez, I hope this gets fixed in karmic.... I'm willing to help but not sure what log files to give... I need a developer to tell me what file and string to look for.

[GonzO (gonzo)]

Additional workaround: resizing the panel by a few pixels up, then back down, usually fixes the notification area painting for the duration of the sessoin. This forum post (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1328838&page=2) suggests that moving the NA applet to the left or to a different panel fixes the problem. (There are actually a few other fixes suggested).

Also: Is this a dupe of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/449910 ? Or is that a dupe of this? They look remarkably similar.

[Luca Borrione (luca.borrione)]

same problem here for ubuntu 9.10 karmic koala: only the first user who logs in will have the icon which is invisible to others who log after.

no solution found: solved by installing another network manager (wicd works fine for me)

In my opinion developers of nm must ask to the developers of wicd how to solve the problem
and in the meanwhile developers of ubuntu must consider the idea to replace nm with wicd
for future realeses.

I wasted a lot of time trying to make an applet woking while there's another one just working fine!

It's obvious to me that a fresh install must be fully working as much as possible!

So give nm up and replace it with any working applet like wicd to avoid future users to loose their time
on a very old and well known no-solvable bug!!!

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/2591/

I'm very angry to have wasted my time over this :|

[Craig Hewetson (craighewetson-deactivatedaccount)]

Geez, thats a bit harsh. Telling a nm developers that their application should be dropped isn't going to encourage them to fix it.

Irrelevant comments just clutters the bug report and wastes development time, as each developer receives each comment (good or bad) as an email.

Rather add yourself to the "This bug affects 6 people. Does this bug affect you?" on top of this report.

[Luca Borrione (luca.borrione)]

Thank you for your suggestion: I've already done it I'm the number six :)

Sorry if I wrote my opinion which in fact is irrilevant as you say for degug action.
Understood :)

I will use other media as forums for my comments in the future.
I was too angry before to think before acting and I would like to apologize
my behavior because indeed I thank the developers community for
all their efforts and time spent to offer all of us free staff :)

[Craig Hewetson (craighewetson-deactivatedaccount)]

No worries, I've done the same in the past :)
Continue to log bugs though, Ubuntu is awesome and improving mainly because of you and others (the community).

Does anyone know if this happens on the Alpha releases of Lucid?
I wonder if this bug can be classified as a "paper cut":
https://launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts

[Craig Hewetson (craighewetson-deactivatedaccount)]

I've proposed this as a paper cut, based on the following:
"A paper cut is a trivially fixable usability bug that the average user would encounter in default installation of Ubuntu or Kubuntu Desktop Edition."
this bug might not be considered trivial (thats up to the developer to decide) and something that the average user will encounter by a default installation. Well a default installation has a guest account and if I'm not mistaken this bug will occur when the user logins into the guest account.

[Vish (vish)]

Thank you for bringing this bug to our attention. However, a paper cut should be a small usability issue, in the default Ubuntu 9.10 install, that affects many people and is quick and easy to fix. So this bug can't be addressed as part of this project.

This is a bug even in the latest network manager. But the fix is not trivial, [from my discussion with the nm maintainers] Not a papercut
For further information about papercuts criteria, please read https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut.

Don't worry though, this bug has been marked as "Invalid" only in the papercuts project.

[Vish (vish)]

This bug is an upstream one and it would be quite helpful if somebody experiencing it could send the bug the to the people writing the software. You can learn more about how to do this for various upstreams at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream. Thanks in advance!

[I believe i have seen an upstream bug for this already , but unfortuantely i'm not able to find it now.]

[Craig Hewetson (craighewetson-deactivatedaccount)]

I've added the upstream url. Unfortunately I had to choose a distro (fedora) kindof would have liked to use the affects different project but that didn't give me the options stated in the wiki.
Also i logged a new bug, their searching facility is as jacked up as launchpad.

[Vish (vish)]

Thanks for sending upstream

[Vish (vish)]

Updating Upstream bug

[Luca Borrione (luca.borrione)]

Hi, I did a search and found a few duplicates of this bug and I marked them as duplicates of this one only becase they are newer.
But bug #284596 seems to be more followed (it has more people declared affected, more people nominated, more subscribers and so on):
is it more correct to mark bug #284596 as a duplicate of this one (bug #284162) because it's newer or viceversa mark this one (bug #284162) as a duplicate of bug #284596 because it's more followed?

[Drew Scott Daniels (drewdaniels)]

I'm not sure that all the bugs should have been merged, but they can all probably be resolved with the same fixes. That said I don't feel like reviewing them all.

The relevant point of failure is in the function applet_dbus_manager_start_service in the applet-dbus-manager.c file which can currently be seen starting at line 417 at:
http://git.gnome.org/browse/network-manager-applet/tree/src/applet-dbus-manager.c

I don't know enough about dbus, but I believe it should be possible to have multiple event generators and listeners. Simply allowing multiple connections to the backend may not be reasonable if the code is not "thread safe", or at least if the code doesn't account for potential deadlocks and race conditions. I.e. It seems like much more analysis is needed for a proper fix.

Thanks,

     Drew Daniels
Resume: http://www.boxheap.net/ddaniels/resume.html

[Drew Scott Daniels (drewdaniels)]

Hi,
bug #284162 is about not being able to see the icon, bug #284596 seems more about not being able to see the status, yet another bug might be that the network can only be configured by a single user, and another potential security bug is that a second user can make use of a network connection opened by the first user (maybe locking the screen should optionally close the network connection on "secure" connections). That said, I think the problems are all fairly clear no matter whether the bugs are grouped into this larger bug, or split into specific separate issues (which sometimes leads to information going to the wrong reports).

I still think a mode that opens network connections at boot time would be useful too. A boot time connection with the no-configuration after the first nm-applet connection (except with that first instance) bug would mean that no-one would be able to reconfigure the network which is the case when the network is manually configured.

Thanks,

     Drew Daniels
Resume: http://www.boxheap.net/ddaniels/resume.html

[DGMcCloud (duncan-doyle)]

I'm experiencing the exact same problem as described by GonzO in comment #14. This started to happen on my system after the upgrade from Karmic to Lucid. I can't remember ever having experienced this on Karmic, but the problem now occurs on almost every boot.

The icon is there, but will either be invisible (you only see a pixel or two) or it appears as another icon (in my case as the volume icon that's sitting right next to it). After removing and re-adding the notification area, the network applet is shown as expected.

[komputes (komputes)]

Just a little note about the recent bug merge made by tanoloco which caused a little confusion. We do welcome new users to help with bugs, but recommend that if they are unsure of their actions, they should check with some with higher karma and belonging to the bugsquad team (we are available via mailing list or in #ubuntu-bugs on IRC).

The notification area bug is one of intrepid (Ubuntu 8.10). If you are able to reproduce the issue of the notification area missing after switching to another user in 8.10, please open a new bug using the command:
$ apport-bug gnome-panel

The issue with NetworkManager never starting for the second user (it actually starts then crashes silently) is a known one. It has been reported upstream and in Ubuntu Bug #284596 (affects 47 people). This bug has been triaged and already assigned to Alexander sack. I have spoken to Dan Williams (main developer for NetworkManager) who informed me that he is fully aware of the issue and has already plans to fix the issue. It may not make it for NerworkManager 0.8.1, but if not, it should be released soon thereafter.

The bug described in comment #14 & #30 of two volume applets in Lucid (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS) is Bug #573664 - completely separate issue.

So instead of stacking multiple different issues into one meta bug, which causes confusion and does not help developers, this bug will be marked as invalid for the reason given above. Please subscribe to the bugs above which affect you. Thank you for your understanding.

[Luca Borrione (luca.borrione)]

sorry if I created confusion: thank you for explaining me better how to help.

[MyR (myr-jedi)]

"killall gnome-panel" is a work-around I didn't see mentioned anywhere, especially quick if you use the up arrow to recall the last used command in the terminal.

[sds (sds-gnu)]

I experience this problem on boot and without changing users.
restarting gnome-panel or resizing panel does not help.
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS