Popper isn't launched properly after boot-up

[Bhabba]

Since version 0.23 popper doesn't get activated/launched properly after boot-up on my ubuntu 10.04 system. Although the notification about the number of new mails appears correctly, the letter symbol in the gnome panel doesn't change its color to green and the mails aren't displayed by clicking on it.
I guess this has something to do with the gnome-keyring support introduced in 0.23. The problem is reproducible, but happens only on my desktop computer on which I set my user account to log in automatically (thus popper asks for the gnome-keyring password after boot-up and – after typing it in – shows the notification about the number of new mails (unlike the summary in the gnome panel)). I have to open and close the popper configuration to make popper work correctly.
On my netbook on which I use the gnome login screen (to unlock the gnome-keyring password) everything works just fine.

[Ralf Hersel (ralf.hersel)]

Sorry for the inconvenience, we expected some problems with keyring.

Please try this:
 * check for suspicious log entries in file /home/user/.popper/popper_config.log
 * set your keyring passwort temporary to an empty string and test if this helps

[Bhabba (bhabba)]

I checked the log files after a fresh boot-up. The first line of "popper.log" says

"** Message: secret service operation failed: The password was incorrect." (I don't know whether this line was written before or after typing in the pass phrase)

whereas "popper_config.log" remains empty.

I can also confirm that everything works as supposed with an empty keyring password...

[Ralf Hersel (ralf.hersel)]

The only thing I can imagine is that it is what it says: "The password was incorrect".
Please try it again with a very simple passwort for keyring so that you are absolutely shure that you do not have any typos when you key in the password. Sorry, that sounds stupid but I don't know what else it could be.

[Bhabba (bhabba)]

This sounds stupid indeed. The notification about the number of new mails appears correctly after typing in the password (thus it checks my mail accounts succesfully)...

But to be as sure as possible I changed the password to "abc" and tried again: Same result. No info about new mails in the gnome panel.

I suspect that popper checks for new mails before the window asking for the keyring password appears. I checked again the log files – this time before entering the password – and voilà: the line "** Message: secret service operation failed: The password was incorrect." was already written in "popper.log". I also clicked on the mail symbol of the indicator applet but there's no popper entry. After typing in my pass phrase the popper entry appears but as I already mentioned: neither a listing of new mails nor a green letter symbol appears – but – a notification about new mails pops up!

Hopefully I could help...

[Pa_trick17 (trick17)]

Hello Bhabba,

thanks for your detailed reportings!

The first line of popper.log appears because the first thing popper does after launching is trying to open Gnome Keyring with an empty string which is the common method to automatically unlock even if you auto-login. Normally it's better not trying to unlock with an empty string but with an "NULL" which isn't possible at the moment for us python-developers, because of a bug from pythons gnomekeyring-library allready reported by me (-> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633958). If it would be possible to pass an "None" in the gnomekeyring library of python which would pass an "NULL", seahorse would behave as suspected by either trying to unlock automatically or prompt a dialog to unlock the keyring as is usual. We tried to replicate this behaviour which could never be the same as the original behaviour by the application designed to handle password-keyrings (and encryption keys), which seahorse is.

Actually we're trying to solve the problem you're describing at the moment. I have been able to reproduce this behaviour and could say, that in my reproduced case (it had something to do with checking for internet connection, too) it could be solved. So please be patient until we'll give a christmas-gift which hopefully will solve your problems.

Check out this launchpad-site around christmas :-)

If not, feel free to reopen this bug again. We've got an message-menu trial-skript i would like you to use in this case to be sure the problem isn't by a broken configuration of the message-menu.

For now, i'll set it to "Fix Commited".

Thank you for using popper and again for giving back by reporting.

Greets

Patrick

[Bhabba (bhabba)]

Hi Patrick

I always appreciate Christmas gifts :) and I'm pleased to hear you could fix the problem. Before I was using popper I checked for new mails with mail-notification (http://www.nongnu.org/mailnotify/) which seems to be discontinued sadly – but in my eyes popper does its job way more elegant and has already more configuration options. As usual there's another side of the coin and in the case of popper it's not being too mature. Anyway, as long as there are driven and ambitious people taking care of the teething troubles of their digital child I'm glad being able to use such a cool piece of software!

Thank you for the good news (and the insides of the popper development), I will definitely come by around Christmas.

Cheers!
Bhabba

[Pa_trick17 (trick17)]

Hi Babba

your christmas gift is released :-)
-> http://launchpad.net/popper/trunk/zero/+download/popper_024.deb

Let's hope you can give us back a Christmas gift by commenting "Problem fixed" ;-)
If not, feel free to reopen this bug.

Greets

Patrick

[Bhabba (bhabba)]

Hi Patrick

I can't confirm the problem being fixed :/
Still the same behavior: After typing in the password popper displays the message about the number of new mails (assumed there are any) but the mail accounts with the number of new mails beneath poppers entry in the indicator applet do not appear (in one of my previous posts (#4) I accidentally wrote the popper entry itself wouldn't appear. Actually the popper entry appears other than the particular emails/mail accounts). I also noticed that the popper entry doesn't show up at all if I type in a wrong pass phrase (don't know if this applies to v0.23 as well) and – consider it as a feature request – popper doesn't provide any feedback about the wrong password!
Anyway, opening and closing the config leads popper to work as it should (as long as the correct password was typed in).
I hope the bug in pythons gnomekeyring-library is gonna be fixed soon so that popper can unlock the keyring in the specified way.

I'm sorry I can't fulfill your Christmas wish... nevertheless wishing ya happy Christmas!
Bhabba

[Bhabba (bhabba)]

appendix:
Forgot to mention that I also completely uninstalled popper and its settings (actually the folder /home/user/.popper/) and then reinstalled v0.24 just to be sure the problem isn't caused by a messed up config or something...

[Pa_trick17 (trick17)]

Hi Bhabba,

sorry for your broken christmas gift :-(

Man, to be honest, this bug is making me headaches!

I thought it has something to do with the popper-process starting before having a (wifi)internetconnection - that caused the problems in my reproduced case. I got a notification but no (or sometimes(?!) wrong ordered) entries in the messaging-menu. Starting popper defenitely after having a connection to the web (confirmed by pinging google in popper.sh) solved my reproduced case and would have made sense in your case, too, because you're having no issues after launching the configurator (a new popper-process is started after closing).

If you're still motivated (thank you until now!) you may want to give this trial-script, which Ralf created, a try:
-> http://media.cdn.ubuntu-de.org/forum/attachments/2695326/indi.py
-> http://media.cdn.ubuntu-de.org/forum/attachments/2695326/popper.desktop

Please download this two files, store it in a folder other than popper-folders (for example /tmp/indi ) and start indi.py (for example by typing "python /tmp/indi/indi.py" into your console). There should be shown a popper entry and 10 numbered fake-messages in the messaging-menu and every 10 secound there should be created a new fake-message. You could stop the script by hitting CTRL-C.

Because honestely i don't know where to estimate, could you please try this script in different "environments":
- Keyring closed (by cancelling all request-dialogs) <-> opened
- Internetconnection enabled <-> disabled
- Starting immediately after bootup <-> waiting a few minutes
- ...
... and combinations of these.

Thank you very very much for your patience until now. I'm hoping you're going to "keep it rollin'" with/for us.

Greets

Patrick

[Felix (apoapo)]

I got a at least very similar bug, hopefully the same:

Actually, there are 3 different cases:

a) popper works (quite often)
b) popper does not ?start, crashes?
c) popper runs, displays messages, but the main popper entry in the messages menu is lost. Only messages are displayed.

Popper log says:

Keyring.get(self, user): not in Keyring.

It maybe a race condition at startup because the system runs on a SSD.
My keyring has an empty password and i am using autologin.

Manually starting it with "nohup <popperscript.sh> &" works always!

Version 22 worked perfectly for me.

[Tibor (tiboriuss)]

Hello People.. i love Popper.. its easy but there are a bunch of options.
Sry for my bad english, im german.

I found a quick and dirty workaround. You need to have pam_keyring installed (default in Ubuntu). And the Keyrings Password has to be the same as your login Passwort.

For installing pam_keyring just type:

$sudo apt-get install libpam-keyring

in Terminal. After you done this open: "/etc/pam.d/gdm" as root and put the following lines to the end:
"auth optional pam_keyring.so try_first_pass"
"session optional pam_keyring.so"

Then restart and look if it works.
For better understanding feel free to take the text and edit it. Just give me some Credits ;)

[Bhabba (bhabba)]

Hi Patrick

I know several months have passed since my last post, but nevertheless I'd still like to have this terrible annoying bug fixed – so I changed the bug status back to "Incomplete". In the meantime I'm using popper 0.27, but the problem is still the same.

I installed popper on two other machines (both with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS), whose main users also use autologin instead of the gnome login screen. On these two computers exactly the same problem as on my desktop computer occurs. On all machines the login password is the same as the gnome-keyring password.
I'm writing this because I doubt the problem is caused by a (delayed) internet connection. On one machine the internet is established through WLAN, on the other through ADSL (PPP over Ethernet) and on the third through a cable router. So I guess on those 3 machines the internet connection isn't established at exactly the same time during/after boot-up, but the malfunction of popper is identical!

To be 100% sure you know which malfunction I mean I attached 2 screenshots of the gnome indicator applet:
· the first was taken directly after boot-up and typing in the correct password (the actual malfunction I mean)
· the second after opening and closing poppers configuration (which leads popper to work as supposed)

Before the password is typed in (or if a wrong one was entered) no popper entry appears at all.

Another little misbehaviour I discovered (which could be in relation to the main bug) is that popper only notifies about a wrong password when I launch popper_config.sh. If I type in a wrong password after boot-up nothing happens at all! Besides that, the password dialog box of popper_config.sh is in german while the one after boot-up is in english (system language is german).
To me it seems the whole problem lies somewhere in the way popper is launched after boot-up (obviously through popper.sh) ... this seems different to the way it is launched through popper_config.sh. If I lock the keyring, kill popper's python process and type into the terminal "nohup ./usr/share/popper/popper.sh &" the english password dialog box appears. After typing in a wrong password nothing happens. After typing in the correct password, the popper entry appears, but no mail accounts an no green letter symbol -> same behaviour as after boot-up. Either way it outputs "Zeile 18: kill: %-: Kein solcher Job.", but of course I don't know what that means :p

I also tried your trial script (while popper wasn't running). I didn't really figure out what exactly I have to report...
There are always 7 messages displayed at the maximum and no popup messages. The letter symbol is always green. Every 10 seconds the oldest message is replaced by a new one. All messages consist of a number and "(10:33)". As far as I can tell it doesn't matter if the script is started directly after boot-up or only after a few minutes. Also it makes no difference if the keyring is locked or not or if the internet connection is established or not.
The only abnormality I noticed was the first 7 messages (10 are generated de facto, but 7 is the maximum at one time) sometimes not being displayed after the launch of the script (sometimes 1, ...

[snoxu (snoxu3000)]

I'm having a similar issue. When I reboot the email account counters are gone, but I still get notifications.

Restarting Popper fixes it temporarily.

[royden (ryts)]

Can confirm similar behaviour in Popper 0.31 on Precise 32bit.

IMAP GMail account. Mails kept on server. Boot up and, if mail present, the notification sounds, and if enabled, the desktop display presents the mails BUT the email icon has not changed colour and the drop-down does not show the mails. A recheck gets the drop-down and the icon colour working.

Tested this many times.

[Ralf Hersel (ralf.hersel)]

Please check if the package 'python-indicate' is installed on your system: 'apt-cache showpkg python-indicate'. If not, install it with 'sudo apt-get install python-indicate'. If it is already installed, I have no clue what the reason is.

Ubuntu 12.04 comes without the package 'python-indicate' wherefore I added this package as a dependency in Popper 0.31. I tested it on a 64bit Ubuntu 12.04 and it worked well. If all other notifications (sound, desktop display, etc.) work, it means that Popper in general works. So it must be something with the 'python-indicate' module.

[Ralf Hersel (ralf.hersel)]

Sorry, I just saw that you wrote: 'A recheck gets the drop-down and the icon colour working'. Hm, that means the 'python-indicate' module is installed and works. Sounds like a timing issue; maybe Popper fires before the Indicator Menu is ready. I will check it, so please be patient.

[timbo (timbolino)]

On Ubuntu 12.10 64bit I installed popper via getdeb (Popper 0.31.3-1~getdeb1)
When I start popper I just get
/usr/share/popper/popper.sh: Zeile 22: kill: %-: Kein solcher Job.
python-indicate is installed.

[timbo (timbolino)]

popper.log says

Checking email accounts at: Sun Oct 21 00:27:49 2012
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "popper.py", line 1253, in <module>
    if __name__ == '__main__': main()
  File "popper.py", line 1243, in main
    indicator.timeout() # immediate check, firstcheck=True
  File "popper.py", line 549, in timeout
    self.mail_list = self.mails.get_mail(self.sort_order) # get all mails from all inboxes
  File "popper.py", line 233, in get_mail
    status, data = srv.search(None, 'UNSEEN') # ALL or UNSEEN
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/imaplib.py", line 627, in search
    typ, dat = self._simple_command(name, *criteria)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/imaplib.py", line 1070, in _simple_command
    return self._command_complete(name, self._command(name, *args))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/imaplib.py", line 825, in _command
    ', '.join(Commands[name])))
imaplib.error: command SEARCH illegal in state AUTH, only allowed in states SELECTED