Date/time sometimes doesn’t appear in menu bar, settings greyed out

[Manuel Valentin]

it does not happen often, and when it happens, just a log out and re-log in is enough to restore it.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/357266/how-to-show-time-in-ubuntu-13-10/357280

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

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[323232 (323232)]

confirmed,
time mostly does not appear when the laptop is on battery power,
sometimes the session indicator does not appear (and time is appearing)
Log in/out (with cntrl alt del) restores the indicators.
Both problems on two fresh Saucy installs on different laptops....
The main question remains; Whats teh source package related ti the bug?

[323232 (323232)]

see also
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/saucy/+source/indicator-session/+bug/1239710

[Charles Kerr (charlesk)]

This may be a duplicate of bug #1239710; however, we should leave this ticket separate until we're certain.

After 1239710's fix, I haven't seen any more i-session reports but am still seeing i-datetime reports. So it's possible that datetime has two issues causing the same symptom.

[Eric Ongerth (ericongerth)]

I had the indicator-session problem, and was glad to see it was fixed in a recent update. Before the indicator-session fix, I did not have any problem with indicator-datetime. Now I do.

Logging out and back in takes care of it, I don't have to reboot.

13.10 64-bit here, from a fresh install.

[Rob Grune (rg-pigl)]

WRONG SOLUTION. Has nothing to do with reboot or kill. A bit of thinking..... Has everything to do with matching repository server to your region. In my case, time region was China, but repo server was UK. Changing server to China solved the problem, permanently. Best tool for this is Synaptic. very easy user install problem to correct.

[Christian González (droetker)]

@rong: no. I live in Austria, timezone Austria, Ubuntu repo server Austria, Clock is gone.

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

I am seeing this occasionally (13.10 32 bit). killall unity-panel-service restores it.

[Eric Ongerth (ericongerth)]

This bug has returned today on my machine (fully updated Saucy / 13.10 64-bit) after seeming fixed for months. I had to "killall unity-panel-service" as an immediate/temporary solution but I hope it will be fixed in distribution.

Is it the same as this one?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-datetime/+bug/1228360

[Robert Hooker (sarvatt)]

It seems you need to enable auto login to hit this, asked someone hitting it to disable that and he has not hit the problem again in over a month.

[Brian Neal (bgneal)]

This is not related to autologin. I have never used autologin and I still get this bug about one out every 8-10 times I login.

[Charles Kerr (charlesk)]

Can someone confirm whether or not this is still occurring in with indicator-datetime version 13.10.0+14.04.20140314.1-0ubuntu1 or higher?

Given that the settings panel was also greyed out, my first guess is that indicator-datetime was crashing and not being restarted. Ted Gould's upstart work on indicators during the 14.04 should fix the restart issue, so I'd like to get confirmation on whether or not this is still an issue in up-to-date 14.04 installs.

[Wladimir Mangelardo (wmangelardo)]

It happened to me today. I'm not 100% sure but it had never happened to me until now and happened after the last update followed by a restart.

Version of indicator-datetime:

$ apt-cache policy indicator-datetime
indicator-datetime:
  Instalado: 13.10.0+13.10.20131023.2-0ubuntu1
  Candidato: 13.10.0+13.10.20131023.2-0ubuntu1
  Tabela de versão:
 *** 13.10.0+13.10.20131023.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     13.10.0+13.10.20131016.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy/main amd64 Packages

The quick fix "killall unity-panel-service" worked for me

[Jorge Q (jquiroga2005)]

I'm also an affected user. Today after the first startup of the machine the indicator dissapear. I applied the solution of Billisaacs (in the other duplicated thread) after just killing the the unity panel this appears in my terminal.

**@MyComputer:~$ apt-get install indicator-datetime
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
**@MyComputer:~$ killall unity-panel-service
**@MyComputer:~$

And after that, the datetime indicator appears. I have to note that I "killed" the unity panel service and the datetime indicator before, but it didn't appear and my "Date time settings" continued grayed. After run the Billisaacs solution everything was fine. So, maybe for some reason, the lock file is not cleared properly after upgrade which (I think) explains why it affects only the user who uses more the machine, which usually is the same user who do the updates.

My two cents and sorry for my English. I'm not a native speaker.

[richud (richud.com)]

same problem in cleanly installed 14.04 (installed yesterday)

$ apt-cache policy indicator-datetime
indicator-datetime:
  Installed: 13.10.0+14.04.20140415.3-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 13.10.0+14.04.20140415.3-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 13.10.0+14.04.20140415.3-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Srini RamaKrishnan (cheeni)]

Screenshot of Time and Date settings grayed out in Ubuntu 14.04 upgraded from 13.10

$ apt-cache policy indicator-datetime
indicator-datetime:
  Installed: 13.10.0+14.04.20140415.3-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 13.10.0+14.04.20140415.3-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 13.10.0+14.04.20140415.3-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[druisan (druisan)]

Updated from 12.04 to 14.04 and same problem.

[vanadium (ftack)]

On a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04 I have the issue today. First time in the two weeks I am running Ubuntu 14.04, though with frequent restarts (laptop).

[intuiter (vmetsis)]

My Date/Time (and some other indicators) do now show up at all after an upgrade from 12.04 to 14.04. I have reported it on a separate report https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-datetime/+bug/1317288

I am not sure if it is the same problem or a different one.

[Jeton Thaci (jeton-th)]

I'm having this problem on 14.04.

HEEEEEEEEEEEELP!!!

[Alex_ander (ks-alexandr)]

Jeton,
when was the last time you updated the system?
this is a new installation or an upgrade from 13.10?

[Benjamin Xiao (ben-r-xiao)]

This happened to me on a new install.

[Lucas Partridge (oakwing)]

I've got this issue since upgrading a system from 12.04 to 14.04. 'killall unity-panel-service' restores the clock in the menu and in the system settings; but the next time I come in after restarting the computer the clock has gone and the clock settings are greyed out again:(.

[Margarita Manterola (marga-9)]

This is still a problem. Seen in a machine upgraded from 12.04 to 14.04.

This bug has more than 10 duplicates and more than 200 people affected. Can we get some traction into getting a real fix instead of recommending a killall command?

[jimav (james-avera)]

Still happening in 13.10 after updating system on 9/1/2014.

Reboot does NOT fix problem, but 'killall unity-panel-service' does.

[Bryce Nesbitt (bryce2)]

'killall unity-panel-service' brings it back temporarily, on Ubuntu 14.04LTS

[rami (lehtinen-rami)]

it disappeared for me the first time this week. ubuntu 14.04

[rami (lehtinen-rami)]

i just had some locales (/etc/default/locale) badly configured that were causing datetime / calendar disappearing

[Michisteiner (michisteiner)]

I see it also on 14.04 (32-bit) but only very recently. And it happened always right away after boot and log in. A workaround (a bit more elegant that the killall one mentioned above) was for me to just start the service in a shell as ...

      /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/indicator-datetime/indicator-datetime-service

... which i copy/pasted from /etc/xdg/autostart/indicator-datetime.desktop. Looking in log-files in /var/log and in ~/.xsession-error i didn't find any errors, so not sure whether it crashed or simply didn't get started (e.g., whether above xdg autostart was ignored?)

[ooBartez (5-b)]

Still happens with a clean and updated 14.10 install. Clock randomly doesn't show.

"killall unity-panel-service" brings it back temporarily.

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

@ Janot
If you want to mark a bug as affecting a particular release, it's more effective to enter its first name into the tag list.

[Gideon Walker (gideon425-launchpad)]

I have just starting hitting this bug.

[Dave Wolfe (dave-wolfeworks)]

Don't know if it's the exact same problem since my settings were never grayed-out and killing unity-panel-service didn't help, but I think #8 & #31 relate to how I was able to fix datetime not displaying. I noticed that it would display if I didn't try to display weekday and month and finally connected that to other reports about a locale bug and Python encountering invalid characters in the my-weather-indicator code. The fix for both indicators is to fix the locale by adding "LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8" (or the appropriate equivalent) to /etc/default/locale and rebooting. My-weather-indicator and datetime-indicator with weekday and month both display then.

[Saikat Sen (saikosen)]

I have also faced this on 14.04 (with all updates installed). 'killall unity-panel-service' command helped.

[Gideon Walker (gideon425-launchpad)]

I am using version 14.4.2 and am working round the issue by killing the process /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-datetime/indicator-datetime-service

[Jim Perkins (jimperkins)]

just did an update today which required a reboot and got hit with this
 uname -a
Linux htpc 3.13.0-73-generic #116-Ubuntu SMP Fri Dec 4 15:31:30 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
 cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS \n \l

resolved issue as outline in post10

'killall unity-panel-service'

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

Does this bug still manifest itself? It is years old. I have not seen the problem since several Ubuntu versions ago.

[Jarosław Bartkowiak (jaroslaw-bartkowiak)]

No, it doesn't. I don't remember when I saw it last.

W dniu 2018-08-28 o 18:01, Colin Law pisze:
> Does this bug still manifest itself? It is years old. I have not seen
> the problem since several Ubuntu versions ago.
>

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Further to comments #40 and #41 I'm closing this as being fixed. The last report of someone seeing this issue was over 5 years ago in a desktop environment that is no longer Ubuntu's default.

If anyone does still see an issue then a new bug report should be opened so that debug information specific to the reporting user gets added to the bug report.