extension doesn't work, no app icons appear in top bar

[Tessa]

On other installs, this extension correctly provides a system tray space for apps to display their indicator icons. However, on a fresh install of 17.10 with gnome running from lightdm (because gdm3 fails with the current nvidia binary drivers), it doesn't appear to be active. There are background apps (like variety) which should be displayed, but no icons appear.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: gnome-shell-extension-appindicator 17.10.3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-36.40-generic 4.13.13
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-36-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_uvm zfs zunicode zavl zcommon znvpair nvidia_drm nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu3.7
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Tue Mar 6 23:40:42 2018
Dependencies:

InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-03-05 (1 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" - Release amd64 (20180105.1)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: gnome-shell-extension-appindicator
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Tessa (unit3)]

Got GDM3 to temporarily work by stopping a successful lightdm run and starting gdm3, but the tray icons are still missing, so likely unrelated to display manager.

[dino99 (9d9)]

you need to activate them into gnome-tweak-tool
https://itsfoss.com/gnome-shell-extensions/

[Tessa (unit3)]

@dino99: it's activated there. also, I tried purging and reinstalling the package, didn't help.

[dino99 (9d9)]

Then check if its a theme problem; switch to an other one.

[Tessa (unit3)]

tried every combo of gtk and shell theme installed on my system. none of them made the icons appear.

[dino99 (9d9)]

Is 'gnome-shell-extensions' installed ?
Is there error(s) about 'extension' ( journalctl -b | grep extension ) ?

[Tessa (unit3)]

gnome-shell-extensions wasn't installed, but since it doesn't contain this extension and isn't mandated by ubuntu-desktop, it didn't seem important. in any case, I installed it, logged out and back in, and no change, still broken.

There are a ton of warnings about extensions in journalctl -b, and the following look pertinent, but don't tell me what the issue is:

Mar 07 00:09:27 viper indicator-appli[6530]: Name Lost
Mar 07 00:09:30 viper indicator-sound[11809]: volume-control-pulse.vala:735: unable to get pulse unix socket: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.PulseAudio1 was not provided by any .service files
Mar 07 00:09:30 viper indicator-keyboard-service[11804]: Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
Mar 07 00:09:30 viper indicator-keybo[11804]: gtk_icon_theme_get_for_screen: assertion 'GDK_IS_SCREEN (screen)' failed

There's nothing when searching for extensions that mentions appindicator though.

[dino99 (9d9)]

At last, test each installed extension one by one, to find which one to blame.

[Tessa (unit3)]

Ok. I am having a really hard time pinning this down. first, because the behaviour doesn't display itself unless I fully restart my login session (login and log back out), switching extensions on and off inside a single session is not enough to trigger the breaking behaviour. so, so far, I've confirmed that:

- using appindicator only with the following extensions seems to always work: "user themes", "put windows",
- adding the openweather extension causes it to break, even though I use that extension on another system without problem. worse, disabling the extension and restarting the session doesn't fix the issue, I have to logout and log back in twice to "reset" whatever's breaking.
- same thing with the "Trash" extension which gives a trash button in the indicator area.
- same with "sound input & output device chooser".

note that all of these work fine together, it's only appindicator that breaks. so this does still feel like a bug in appindicator, especially since I've used it with the openweather extension on 17.10 with no problems before.

I think my next step is to find other extensions that duplicate the appindicator functionality and see if they exhibit the same issues appindicator does with these "problem" extensions.

[Tessa (unit3)]

trying with the upstream kstatusnotifieritm/appindicator extension still had issues with the sound switcher applet and openweather, but toggling it off and on after login fixes the issue, so a lot easier to get working than the ubuntu fork. I'm going to switch to the upstream code for now, since at least that one will work with my extensions if I just toggle it post login. maybe I can even make a script to do that for me and put it in my startup apps list.

[dino99 (9d9)]

To be more clear, testing extension one by one, means purging them all first. Then be sure to cleanup '.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions', that path is obsolete and can disturb actual path into /usr/...
After a deep system cleaning (gtkorphan/bleachbit), you can then reinstall the needed extension from the ubuntu archive. So never install from the url, nor upgrade the one installed from the url (not the same path installation. Indeed reinstall one by one to have a chance to find the faulty one.

[Tessa (unit3)]

is that really what's required to properly enable and disable gnome extensions? because that is terrifying tbh. certainly this is unacceptably unfriendly if an end-user installs a bad extension. is there documentation that explains this all somewhere, perhaps a gnome guide for doing cleanup and troubleshooting, maybe?

I'll try to test it when I have time, but at this point I don't know how much more I can reasonably commit when it feels like the gnome extensions system is really buggy and fragile.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-shell-extension-appindicator (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]