Does not display alarms until I start evolution

[Martin Pitt]

For some weeks now I do not get appointment notifications (alarms) any more until I start evolution once (after closing it alarm notifications continue to work fine).

Reproduce:
 * Start evolution, add an event in 10 minutes, add an alarm for '5 minutes before the event'
 * Log out (check on VT that all your processes have terminated, kill -15 -1)
 * Log back in and wait some minutes until the alarm time has passed (no notification here)
 * open evolution and instantly see the late alarm, together with a blinking clock/exclamation mark in the panel
 * after closing evo, further notifications work fine.

This worked well in earlier edgy and the stable releases before.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I suspect the reason is that evolution-alarm-notify is not running after login. Starting evolution starts it.

[Slight Slightly (slight--deactivatedaccount)]

Evolution alarm notify should really start on log-in. The gnome panel clock/calendar shows these events, for them not to actually trigger an alarm just because you haven't opened the app that edits them seems pretty poor, surely this is one of the major arguments for e-d-s?

This behaviour is also broken for me on Dapper.

I've filed a related bug about this, and there's one on Gnome's bugzilla too:

https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/evolution-data-server/+bug/57318

[Slight Slightly (slight--deactivatedaccount)]

Related Gnome bug:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=352429

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Upstream bug about that: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=352429

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Upstream says that either evolution-alarm-notify or evolution-data-server needs to be started in the session. I'm not sure who is right...

[towsonu2003 (towsonu2003)]

having the same problem. not using evolution for much (except alarms), I almost missed the due dates to order books for the class I'll be teaching. ouch

[towsonu2003 (towsonu2003)]

any workarounds? like a program I can add to gnome session? thanks

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I'll take it for now, will look into it.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I see two possibilities here:

 (1) spawn e-a-n from e-d-s
 (2) add an /etc/xdg/autostart .desktop file for e-a-n to evolution

I'd prefer (2), it is the cleaner solution and also the one suggested by upstream in the upstream bug. (1) would have a better semantics, though (only started when necessary, can be --force-shutdown'ed if wanted, etc.). But having it always running should DTRT given that we don't want to miss meeting notifications :)

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

If I put the attached .desktop file into /etc/xdg/autostart, it works. The only thing I'm concerned about: previously the process looked like this:

  /usr/lib/evolution/evolution-data-server-1.8 --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_DataServer_CalFactory:1.2 --oaf-ior-fd=31

(as started by evolution). Now the process has no command line arguments. Seb, does that hurt?

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

 evolution (2.8.1-0ubuntu3) edgy; urgency=low
 .
   * Add debian/evolution-alarm-notify.desktop: Autostart desktop file to start
     evolution-alarm-notify with the session. No more missed appointments
     because no notification went off! Closes: LP#62593
   * debian/evolution.install: Install above file into etc/xdg/autostart/.

[towsonu2003 (towsonu2003)]

can you comment on how to fix this one on dapper? thanks :)

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Sure, just stick the attached desktop file into /etc/xdg/autostart

[towsonu2003 (towsonu2003)]

just fixed references to evolution 2.8 (dapper has 2.6).

> just stick the attached desktop file into /etc/xdg/autostart

thanks a lot :) I'll report back if it causes any problems.

[towsonu2003 (towsonu2003)]

works nicely with dapper :) hopefully you can backport this fix to dapper.