Ubuntu
dropbox package

  1. Bug #1546176
  2. Comment #33

Comment 33 for bug 1546176

Revision history for this message
Jeff (boardman-malibu) wrote : Re: Dropbox icon not working on Xubuntu 14.04

Currently running Dropbox 13.4.21 on Xubuntu 14.04.5. Every time the program updates I get the red circle on the taskbar and mouseovers don't work. I just re-add the line:

   export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=''

to the 'dropboxd' script in my '~/.dropboxd-dist' folder ,and restart dropbox

The point of all these solutions is to hide the DBUS user session and the indicator-plugin from Dropbox so it is forced to use the system-tray API instead. The Dropbox app doesn't provide the correct interfaces for the indicator to use.

Of course your must have a system-tray plugin (like 'Notification Area' in xfce4) on your desktop for this to work

For xfce4, all script based solutions may fail if session saving is enabled, because the binary could be launched directly. In my ~/.profile file I added the lines:

    rm -f /home/jhm/.cache/sessions/*session*
    rm -f /home/jhm/.cache/sessions/*.state

because even when I tell xfce4 not to save, it does anyway.

One recent problem I discovered was Dropbox not being installed in the /home/<user> folder but in /var instead. I probably used the Software store for that one. If you don't get monthly updates check this line in the '/usr/bin/dropbox' script:

    PARENT_DIR = os.path.expanduser("~") #This is correct

I could write a hourly cron job to check and repair my dropdoxd script but I want to know if next update fails to fix the problem.