Comment 15 for bug 188963

In order to apply the patch on Jaunty do this:

* get the source and unpack it somewhere

* copy the patch file under the main source dir

* optionally, edit it and change the condition; I changed it to < 1,
  so the icon only shows when there's zero monitors

* apply the patch it like this, from the source dir:
  patch -p1 < l-m-a-3.0-conditional-icon.patch

* install packages needed for compilation:
  sudo apt-get install libgnomeui-dev libpanel-applet2-dev libglade2-dev
* compile like this: ./jb build

* Don't do ./jb install if you used the vanilla source! Instead, look under build/src/ and you'll find a link-monitor-applet binary. Copy it to /usr/lib/link-monitor-applet/. Backup the other one first. The new one will need to have changed rights like this:
  chown root.root link-monitor-applet
  chmod u+s link-monitor-applet

Yeah, it needs suid root. :/ Which probably deserves a bug report on its own, since I find it hard to believe you can't ping stuff unless you're root, whereas being suid root magnifies any potential security problems the applet may ever have.