nm-applet icon does not reflect signal strength

[Oded Arbel]

When Network Manager is used to connect to a wireless network (WiFi or mobile broadband), the nm-applet icon in the notification tray shows the signal strength of the current connection, so that the user can see in a glance what is the current status of their connection.

This works very well when not using the Ubuntu indicator applet, but when the indicator applet is in use it swallows the nm-applet icon and the resulting icon is static - it only reflects the connection type by not the signal strength. As can be seen in the screenshot, the nm-applet menu shows the correct signal strength while the indicator icon seems to show full strength even when that is not the case.

This bug is for the current Natty version.

[Oded Arbel (oded-geek)]

Sorry - there is a mistake in the bug description: the problematic behavior happens when the nm-applet is hosted in the notification area while it works OK in the indicator applet.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

I see. Then this would mean the fallback code for the standard notification area is not taking into account icon changes (which happen frequently enough, to provide accurate signal level icons). That would make it an issue in libappindicator (because nm-applet uses the fallback code it provides without overloading the feature), so reassigning this bug to the package.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Are you still seeing this issue? I think it's been fixed in Ubuntu 12.04.

Would you be able to test this on a LiveCD and confirm whether you are still seeing the same issue?

 Thanks!

[udippel (udippel)]

This is still on in Kubuntu 12.04. The screenshot shows the situation. I am actually far away from the access point, though the applet shows 100%. Which is not quite confirmed by iwconf and a distance of 10 m through a number of thick walls.

It might be that it is another bug only in plasma widgets, though?

[udippel (udippel)]

Ooops, all wrong image. My excuses!
Here comes the good one:

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

udippel, please file a separate bug for your issue.

This got fixed already, and is applied in 12.04; any further problems should be filed as new bugs since they'll certainly be caused by a different piece of code, and different systems.