[mintMenu] icon disappears regularly

[Ryan Jung]

This issue concerns the mintMenu package, version 4.9.4 and some previous versions.

The icon for the main Mint Menu panel applet disappears regularly under different circumstances. The applet is reduced to a single pixel's width and is difficult to click on. When this occurs, the keyboard shortcut still works to activate the menu, but even when this is done, the menu's icon remains missing.

Notably, the circumstance under which this has been an issue has involved putting a laptop running Linux Mint Helena to sleep and waking it back up with a different power source (i.e. putting it to sleep on battery power and waking it up on A/C power, or vice versa). This, however, does not consistently produce the bug. Also, we have verified that the bug can be triggered without involving sleep mode at all. These tests are suggestive, but inconclusive.

Both laptops this has been tested on have dual-core processors, and it was suggested that perhaps it could be a CPU synchronization error, though that is highly unlikely.

There are three known workarounds:

1 - Use the keyboard shortcut or manage to find that single pixel that still accepts the click event.
2 - Find the pixel to right-click and reach the applet's preferences. Untick the "Show button icon" checkbox and retick it.
3 - Run gconf-editor, find the key /apps/mintMenu/hide_applet_icon, set it to true, then set it to false.

This issue has been discussed at length in this message board: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=38884

[Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)]

Can you reset mintmenu completely (remove it from the panel, open a terminal, type "rm -rf ~/.linuxmint/mintMenu", type "mintmenu clean", reboot, add it to the panel again) and then see if you can reproduce the problem?

[Ryan Jung (gradysghost)]

I haven't experienced the problem in a while, but I've asked one of the guys
in the forum who is experiencing it right now to try it. I'll let you know
the results. Thanks for looking into this.

On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 5:59 AM, Clement Lefebvre <email address hidden>wrote:

> Can you reset mintmenu completely (remove it from the panel, open a
> terminal, type "rm -rf ~/.linuxmint/mintMenu", type "mintmenu clean",
> reboot, add it to the panel again) and then see if you can reproduce the
> problem?
>
> ** Changed in: linuxmint
> Assignee: (unassigned) => Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)
>
> ** Changed in: linuxmint
> Importance: Undecided => High
>
> ** Changed in: linuxmint
> Status: New => Confirmed
>
> --
> [mintMenu] icon disappears regularly
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/537671
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
I'm an anti-semantite, that is, a Nounzi.

[B Bobo (yout-bobo123)]

On Mint Helena 8 Main, I found a way that always makes the mintMenu disappear into the weird 1-pixel wide collapsed state. Click on each of the section headings in turn, i.e. Places, System, and Applications, until they have all disappeared. The menu is now a 1-pixel-wide whitish object at the lower-left of the display. The menu can be restored to its original state by removing it from the panel and re-adding it.

[Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)]

B Bobo: That's not a bug. You can hide plugins into the sidepane if you want by clicking on their header... of course if the sidepane isn't visible you won't see them.. and if you hide them all you'll end up with that one-pixel wide "invisible" sidepane. All you need to do is go to the preferences and set the sidepane to be visible.

I'm not closing the bug though, I think the original poster's problem is different. I'd be interested in finding out how to reproduce the problem though...

[B Bobo (yout-bobo123)]

Clement: Ok, thanks for the reply. Two things: First, I see what you mean, but what I saw was a bit different -- when I clicked on the section headings, they didn't just collapse into icons on the sidepane -- they completely disappeared, leaving no icons behind and a 1-pixel wide whitish object instead of the sidepane. The 1-pixel wide region could be popped up and down at the extreme left of the display by clicking the mintMenu icon, but the region was not clickable or interactive in any way. The only solution I found was to remove the mintMenu from the panel and re-add it to get it back to normal. But I cannot reproduce this issue anymore. Now, the section headings reliably convert into icons when clicked and vice-versa.

Second, I wonder if there is a way of making the mintMenu sidepane functionality slightly more intuitive for complete beginners. Is there, for example, a way to make it more obvious that clicking on the section headings -- Places, System and Applications -- will actually cause them to disappear and be replaced by icons? It is perhaps not what everybody would expect to happen. Some kind of indication such as a tooltip if you hover over the section heading?

[Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)]

It needs a complete redesign. The plugins architecture and their modularity (hiding them in the sidepane and all) was inherited from USP... in mintMenu they don't make much sense. I'll see if we can achieve that in Mint 9, otherwise we'll do something about in Mint 10.

[Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)]

Update: Sidebar and pinning removed in Mint 10's mintmenu. This should not be reproducible anymore.