NetworkManager applet weirdness

[Andreas Modinos]

Binary package hint: network-manager

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala with latest updates
network-manager: 0.8~a~git.20091013t193206.679d548-0ubuntu1
network-manager-gnome: 0.8~a~git.20091014t134532.4033e62-0ubuntu1

Not sure if this is NetworkManager or the applet that's playing up but when I log in, the applet is not where it's supposed to be. The spot in the indicator area is either blank or occupied by another volume control icon. This makes NetworkManager inaccessible. However the system appears to connect to previous networks.

sudo killall NetworkManager restores the applet, but like said makes it hard to know if the problem is with the applet or NetworkManager itself.

Suspending and resuming does not cause this issue, only restarting.
On resume, the applet says Network disconnected twise (even after it has actually reconnected),

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Date: Thu Feb 4 17:03:25 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Gconf:

IfupdownConfig:
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
IpRoute:
 192.168.1.0/24 dev wlan0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.100 metric 2
 169.254.0.0/16 dev wlan0 scope link metric 1000
 default via 192.168.1.1 dev wlan0 proto static
Package: network-manager 0.8~a~git.20091013t193206.679d548-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-17.54-generic
RfKill:
 0: phy0: Wireless LAN
  Soft blocked: no
  Hard blocked: no
SourcePackage: network-manager
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-17-generic x86_64

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Andreas,

Was that system a clean installation or was it upgraded to Karmic from a previous release? If it's an upgrade, does the same thing happen if you were to create a new user, and login into that user instead after a clean reboot (restarting is important there)?

[Andreas Modinos (blueturtl)]

This is a brand new install. No previous data nor /home or anything on the drive.

If it matters, this system is set to log in automatically (home media box).

[Andreas Modinos (blueturtl)]

Problem seems to have gone away by itself. Not sure if it's related to my switching to a different router.

[Andreas Modinos (blueturtl)]

Disregard that last one, it happened again today.

Today when the applet disappeared I decided to poke around and instead of killing all related processes I took a jab at the process nm-applet. After killing that process and then restarting it through the terminal with 'nm-applet &' the icon returned. Since the internet connection had formed I now assume it must be a bug in the applet, not NetworkManager itself.

[Andreas Modinos (blueturtl)]

I have identified this as a duplicate of bug 439448. Doesn't have anything to do with either Network Manager nor nm-applet, those just happen to be the ones that are affected by the aforementioned bug.