Unity makes Gajim unusable

[Christoph Langner]

Binary package hint: gajim

Unity and it's missing notification area breaks gajim... Please try the following:

Start Gajim so that Gajim appears inside the launcher, close it with the red close button and Gajim get's removed from the launcher (But is still running). So far so good... Now try to reopen you gajim session. There's no way to get back to you session but to restart Gajim from the dash. Gajim will start again and will tell you that there is allready an active gajim session running. You can either tell gajim to start another session or quit. In my eyes there's no way to get back to you old session. So i have to kill the running gajim session to finally get rid of it

Now it get's even worse. When I restart gajim it can't be found on your screen. Gajim remembers that it has been minimised and restarts into the same status. So once again, no Gajim on your Desktop. You've got to fiddle inside the config files inside ~/.gajim (or delete the folder) to set the status to "not minimzed", to get back a working Gajim client.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: gajim 0.13.4-3ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Apr 15 12:06:25 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release amd64 (20101007)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=de:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gajim
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-03-24 (21 days ago)

[Nikolaus Polak (nik-p)]

I guess whitelisting the Gajim notification symbol would solve this?

Tried this manual, seems to work - but I think it should be default:

# Read whitelist settings
~$ gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist
['JavaEmbeddedFrame', 'Mumble', 'Wine', 'Skype', 'hp-systray']

# Add Gajim to whitelist
~$ gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['JavaEmbeddedFrame', 'Mumble', 'Wine', 'Skype', 'hp-systray', 'Gajim']"

[Christoph Langner (chrissss)]

Yep, whitelisting Gajim helps.

[Alex Bachmeier (cebalrai)]

This bug ist also present under precise.

[manatorg (manatorg)]

worse: the workaround doesn't work on precise!

gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist
['JavaEmbeddedFrame', 'Wine', 'scp-dbus-service', 'Update-notifier', 'Gajim']

[manatorg (manatorg)]

at least you could get back the roaster with:

gajim-remote toggle_roster_appearance

[Alex Bachmeier (cebalrai)]

Whitelisting 'all' did the trick for me.

[manatorg (manatorg)]

hm,
after a reboot gajim works (with whitelisting). maybe some update fixed it.

[Ivo Anjo (knuckles)]

Workaround from Comment #8 worked for me.

[Ryan (murdock304)]

this command allowed the gajim icon to populate the notification area:
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['JavaEmbeddedFrame', 'Mumble', 'Wine', 'Skype', 'hp-systray', 'Gajim']

so i don't have to manually kill it if i accidentally close the main window. May want to put that in the post setup part of the deb.

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

or to have it in one simple, idiot(like me)- proof command:

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "$( gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist| sed s/]/,\ \'Gajim\']/)"

adds gajim to the existing entries in the whitelist.

I wonder if that isn't a job that must be done by the software at first start, as running it in any different way is obviously useless and buggy.

That being said, I'm not sure what would be the best way to solve this? I migh be interesting to help getting it fixed if I have an idea how to do it right.

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

Or, is it a general bug in unity that it even needs a whitelist?
If thast means b y default applications are not allowed to use the notification area, what's the reason for this?

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

IMHO notz a bug in the application but in unity if it decides ti hide notifications by default and requires the user to manually enable them for each app.

[Ivo Anjo (knuckles)]

I think this is essentially solved with more recent gajim versions:
- Gajim pops up the current window when you try to start a second instance instead of the old "start a new one or exit"
- There is a "Appindicator integration" plugin that integrates gajim into the messaging menu.

The only thing "missing" I guess would be for the plugin to be shipped as default, but I think that should be filed as a wish, as gajim is still useable either way.

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

the old(?) version of gajim works perfectly after applying the above solution, so as I said, it's not gajim being wrong but unity for some reason blacklisting notifications by default.

Anyway, if it's solved in 13.04 with the unity / gajim combination available there, we probably shoudln't worry further ;)

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

But, the problem is back in 13.04. Again, for example gajim, is blacklisted by default.

I consider this a major usability Bug in Unity.

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

And the fixes mentioned here above do not even work anymore:

# gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "$( gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist| sed s/]/,\ \'Gajim\']/)"
No such schema 'com.canonical.Unity.Panel'

[Paddy Landau (paddy-landau)]

@henning — The fix that you mentioned will not work, because the notification area has been *hard-coded* (believe it or not) to allow only Wine and Java. See bug #974480.

See also bug #1119420, where you can add your vote for this to be repaired.

[Ivo Anjo (knuckles)]

Henning: You just need to install and enable the "appindicator" plugin for gajim.

[Henning Sprang (henning)]

Ivo: I do not see a package like that to be available in Ubuntu.

Thanks, I'm going to try to find out if I can live with just using empathy... if not I will see what I do with these things.

[Drew Snellgrove (forkinme-deactivatedaccount)]

Blacklisting system tray icons has been by design for a long time. They purposely removed the ability to edit the blacklist in 13.04. What's been done has been annoying and due to the fracturing of the indicator systems (system tray vs. app indicator vs. whatever gnome/kde are using these days) a lot of application developers have stopped trying to support the many ways to do indicators and just asked their users to make plugins, assuming that popular needs would be solved. Despite being annoying, I question whether this is a "bug" at all. It's all by intentional design.

The plugin that was referred to is Gajim's way of supporting Unity's appindicator system. You can find it Gajim in Edit->Plugins or http://trac-plugins.gajim.org/wiki/AppindicatorSupportPlugin. Since this is the "official" way of getting appindicator support at this time this bug should probably be closed as "won't fix" since Unity won't be backing down on this change.

[DimkaS (dimka-rs)]

I do not have Edit->Plugins menu in gajim (0.15.1). How do I get indocator for gajim?

[DimkaS (dimka-rs)]

Sorry, bad russian translation reads "Disconnect" instead of "Plugins".

[Xavier Guillot (valeryan-24)]

Hi DimkaS,

I think you are affected by bug #1055404

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gajim/+bug/1055404

On Raring (it seems to not be a problem on Saucy), when option to have the icons in the menu is activated, the menus in "Edit" are wrong :

Instead of Accounts - Profile, Avatar - Preferences - Plugins (on the right),
I get : Network - Properties - Preferences - Disconnect (right on the screenshot)

https://launchpadlibrarian.net/123380807/Gajim-Menu-2.png