language panel does not show up

[David Huggins-Daines]

Binary package hint: ibus

Hi, I decided to try to switch from SCIM to iBus in Karmic since it is supposed to be the wave of the future.

First, I tried to run:

im-switch -s ibus

But this did not work because I had a broken link in ~/.xinput.d/en_US

After removing this link, I was able to enable ibus. I logged out and back in and tried to use it.

It does appear to allow me to input Chinese characters, however, it refuses to show the language panel, which makes Pinyin input completely useless. Changing the setting in ibus-setup to "always" show it still doesn't cause it to appear.

If it makes any difference, I removed all of the hotkeys except Alt-Grave, since I don't have most of them and Ctrl-Space is kind of important for Emacs.

Is there any way that I can debug this? I'm mystified as to what program actually runs to show the panel in the first place.

Also, I don't have a notification icon for ibus (strangely enough I had one if I started it up when I had SCIM running...)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Sep 7 15:17:21 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: ibus-gtk 1.2.0.20090723-1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-9.29-generic
SourcePackage: ibus
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-9-generic x86_64

[LI Daobing (lidaobing)]

have you add input method to ibus?

you can find this by run ibus-setup, then select the second tab.

a screenshot in attachment.

[Jeroen Hoek (mail-jeroenhoek)]

I have the same problem. I have Anthy selected as IME, and I can type Japanese and activate and deactivate the IME using Ctrl+Space, but it does not show the candidate list or the language panel.

This is a pretty critical bug. Please let us know how to help debug this issue.

[Jeroen Hoek (mail-jeroenhoek)]

(this is in Karmic alpha 6)

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

can you please post the output of the following commands:

1. 'ps axw | grep ibus'

2. 'dpkg -l | grep ibus'

Thanks

[David Huggins-Daines (dhuggins)]

So, eventually, this problem went away for me, but I can't exactly explain how. IIRC running /usr/lib/ibus/ibus-gtk-ui (or whatever it's called ... sorry, i don't have that computer with me right now) manually made it appear, and then it was magically there the next time I logged in.

[Jeroen Hoek (mail-jeroenhoek)]

It got fixed for me too. I have no idea what was going on really.

[Marcus Comstedt (marcus-mc)]

For me, the problem disappeared after a reboot; just logging out and in again did not help.

I do have an idea how the problem might have occurred:

What I did was that first I opened the IBus Preferences, while my input method was still
SCIM. (I didn't know what IBus was, so I just opened the preferences out of curiosity.)
I then got a requester saying that the IBus server was not running, and would I like
to start it. I clicked yes, and after that I had the notification icon in the panel. After
looking around in the preferences a bit, I decided to try it out for real, so I did im-switch,
and logged out and in again. Now I got IBus, but no ibus-gtk-ui (meaning no icon in the
gnome panel, and no language panel). What I'm guessing happened is this:

* The ibus daemon started by the preferences tool kept running after I logged out,
   because it was not part of the session

* When the new, IBus enabled session started, the daemon was already running, causing
  the init to bail out early

So while this would only happen during the process of switching to IBus, I think it's a valid
bug...

[Marcus Comstedt (marcus-mc)]

Here's what my .xsession-errors said, by the way:

Setting IM through im-switch for locale=en_GB.
Start IM through /home/marcus/.xinput.d/en_GB linked to /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/ibus.
/usr/bin/xmodmap: unable to open file '/usr/share/apps/kxkb/ubuntu.xmodmap' for reading
/usr/bin/xmodmap: 1 error encountered, aborting.
current session already has an ibus-daemon.

After rebooting, I no longer get the message about "current session already has an ibus-daemon.".

[Anton Lindström (hlewagastir)]

I just want to comment that my experience fits Marcus' explanation above. After upgrading to Karmic SCIM stopped working, so I googled a bit and found out about iBus. I opened the preferences for iBus and got the same message about iBus not being started, asking if I wanted to start it. After clicking yes the keyboard icon appeared in the notification area.

Later after logging out and in again the icon disappeared and the language panel wouldn't appear. I tried uninstalling everything scim-related and unselecting then reselecting the languages but nothing helped. Finally rebooting made it work again.

[Anthony Barker (anthony-barker)]

had the same thing happen in 10.04 with ibus. The keyboard did not appear on the toolbar. After I did a full reboot it appeared.

running 'ps axw | grep ibus' it appears that the service is not starting until you reboot.

[JKL (jkl102001)]

I can confirm that the bug exists, and simply rebooting does not fix it for me. In my case all the necessary processes are running, and I can switch input methods using hotkeys. However, the language panel does not show up no matter what I choose in the iBus preferences.

I am running Ubuntu on a laptop with an external monitor. The graphics card is nVidia, and I am using TwinView (one big desktop).

Sometimes I can get the panel to show up again if I disable my external monitor and then enable it again. When it does show up, it always shows up on the lower right corner of my laptop screen, even if the window in which the input method is active is on the external monitor.

I am having no other problems with the graphics card or X.

[JKL (jkl102001)]

I filed a bug report upstream.

http://code.google.com/p/ibus/issues/detail?id=1168

[Alexander Hunziker (alex-hunziker)]

I have this problem under oneiric. However, I'm not using an external screen, so the problem exists in other circumstances as well.

[Jacobsallan (jacobsallan)]

1. Reboot
2. Login (Ubuntu 2D)
$ ps axw |grep ibus
 2195 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/bin/ibus-daemon --xim
 2224 ? Z 0:00 [ibus-gconf] <defunct>
 2244 ? Z 0:00 [ibus-engine-m17] <defunct>
 2611 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/lib/ibus/ibus-gconf
 2613 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/bin/python /usr/share/ibus/ui/gtk/main.py
 2615 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/lib/ibus/ibus-x11 --kill-daemon
 2621 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/lib/ibus-m17n/ibus-engine-m17n --ibus
 2853 pts/0 S+ 0:00 grep --color=auto ibus

(Ibus and it's language panel are visible).

3. Logout
4. Login (Ubuntu 2D)

(Language panel is not visible)

$ ps axw |grep ibus
 3046 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/bin/ibus-daemon --xim
 3055 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/lib/ibus/ibus-gconf
 3058 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/bin/python /usr/share/ibus/ui/gtk/main.py
 3061 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/lib/ibus/ibus-x11 --kill-daemon
 3092 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/lib/ibus-m17n/ibus-engine-m17n --ibus
 3554 pts/0 S+ 0:00 grep --color=auto ibus

$ lsb_release -d
Description: Ubuntu 11.10
$ dpkg -l |grep ibus
ii ibus 1.3.99.20110419-1ubuntu3 Intelligent Input Bus - core
ii ibus-gtk 1.3.99.20110419-1ubuntu3 Intelligent Input Bus - GTK+2 support
ii ibus-gtk3 1.3.99.20110419-1ubuntu3 Intelligent Input Bus - GTK+3 support
ii ibus-m17n 1.3.2-1ubuntu1 m17n engine for IBus
ii ibus-pinyin 1.3.99.20110706-1 Pinyin engine for IBus
ii ibus-pinyin-db-android 1.3.99.20110706-1 Pinyin engine for IBus - Android database
ii ibus-pinyin-db-open-phrase 1.3.99.20110706-1 Pinyin engine for IBus - open-phrase database
ii ibus-table 1.3.0.20100621-3ubuntu1 table engine for IBus
ii libibus-1.0-0 1.3.99.20110419-1ubuntu3 Intelligent Input Bus - shared library
rc libibus1 1.2.0.20091215-1ubuntu4 New input method framework using dbus
rc libibus2 1.3.9-2ubuntu2 New input method framework using dbus
ii libusb-0.1-4 2:0.1.12-18 userspace USB programming library
ii libusb-1.0-0 2:1.0.8-4 userspace USB programming library
ii libusb-dev 2:0.1.12-18 userspace USB programming library development files
ii libusbmuxd1 1.0.7-1 USB multiplexor daemon for iPhone and iPod Touch devices - library
rc libusplash0 0.5.52 userspace bootsplash library
ii pinyin-database 1.2.99-3 ...

[Song Zhao (zhaosong414)]

I have a similar problem under oneiric. perhaps I should post it here.

1. login
2. ps axw|grep ibus
 4194 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/bin/ibus-daemon --xim
 4200 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/lib/ibus/ibus-gconf
 4202 ? Rl 0:35 /usr/bin/python /usr/share/ibus/ui/gtk/main.py
 4204 ? Rl 0:34 /usr/lib/ibus/ibus-x11 --kill-daemon
 4256 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/lib//ibus-sunpinyin/ibus-engine-sunpinyin --ibus
 4836 pts/0 S+ 0:00 grep --color=auto ibus

 the ibus icon did not show in the upper right pannel and there was no input method.
But the process:
 4204 ? Rl 0:34 /usr/lib/ibus/ibus-x11 --kill-daemon
occupied almost 100% cpu.

3. I killed the process:
 4204 ? Rl 0:34 /usr/lib/ibus/ibus-x11 --kill-daemon
and
 4202 ? Rl 0:35 /usr/bin/python /usr/share/ibus/ui/gtk/main.py
in htop

4. then I pressed Alt+F2 run
 ibus-setup
5. I pressed ok when a dialog pop-up saying the ibus-daemon was not running and it would start a ibus-daemon.
6. ps axw|grep ibus
 4194 ? Z 0:04 [ibus-daemon] <defunct>
 4897 ? Sl 0:03 ibus-daemon --xim
 4898 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/lib/ibus/ibus-gconf
 4900 ? Sl 0:01 /usr/bin/python /usr/share/ibus/ui/gtk/main.py
 4902 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/lib/ibus/ibus-x11 --kill-daemon
 4907 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/lib//ibus-sunpinyin/ibus-engine-sunpinyin --ibus
 4928 pts/0 S+ 0:00 grep --color=auto ibus
now, the ibus icon showed in the upper right pannel, the input method worked fine, and cup occupation was normal.
7. logout
8. login, the same problem happened again as described in 1.

other information

1. lsb_release -d
Description: Ubuntu 11.10

2. dpkg -l|grep ibus
ii ibus 1.3.99.20110419-1ubuntu3 Intelligent Input Bus - core
ii ibus-gtk 1.3.99.20110419-1ubuntu3 Intelligent Input Bus - GTK+2 support
ii ibus-gtk3 1.3.99.20110419-1ubuntu3 Intelligent Input Bus - GTK+3 support
ii ibus-pinyin 1.3.99.20110706-1 Pinyin engine for IBus
ii ibus-pinyin-db-android 1.3.99.20110706-1 Pinyin engine for IBus - Android database
ii ibus-qt4 1.3.1-1ubuntu3 qt-immodule for ibus (QT4)
ii ibus-sunpinyin 2.0.3-1ubuntu1 sunpinyin engine for ibus
ii ibus-table 1.3.0.20100621-3ubuntu1 table engine for IBus
ii libibus-1.0-0 1.3.99.20110419-1ubuntu3 Intelligent Input Bus - shared library
ii libibus-qt1 1.3.1-1ubuntu3 qt-immodule for ibus (QT4)
rc libibus1 1.2.0.20091215-1ubuntu4 New input method framework using dbus
rc libibus2 1.3.9-0ubuntu3 New input method framework using dbus
ii libusb-...

[dreamon (dreamon)]

From my experience, the bug started appearing on Maverick, when the default behaviour of the iBus language bar was changed to "embedded" instead of "when active", and hasn't disappeared since. Changing the setting to "when active" in the iBus preferences does not always make the language bar come up when iBus is active. A workaround, which termporarily fixes the issue for me, has been to click on the iBus panel icon and select "restart" from the context menu. When iBus has restarted, the language bar behaves properly. The issue reappaears after a reboot of Ubuntu, though.

I have so far observed this problem on every Ubuntu installation I have set up for myself or friends. I suppose most people don't bother changing the panel's default behaviour in the preferences, and restarting the daemon from the panel menu is uncomplicated. But from my experience, this is a major dealbreaker for Asian users.

[周成瑞 (e93b5ae3)]

I use 12.04 and dual monitor. After I unplug the external monitor, I find the panel in my laptop screen.

JKL, can you try it my way?

[周成瑞 (e93b5ae3)]

Bug is claimed to be fixed here: http://code.google.com/p/ibus/issues/detail?id=1168

[Aron Xu (happyaron)]

Verified to be fixed in Precise, as detailed in upstream bug tracker:
http://code.google.com/p/ibus/issues/detail?id=1168