On startup IndicatorApplet & FastUserSwitchApplet fail on startup

[Brewster Malevich]

Binary package hint: indicator-applet

After upgrading to Lucid from Karmic the IndicatorApplet and UserSwitchApplet fail on startup. They also fail if I try to add the applets to the panel. Apport does not catch a crash.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Mar 10 16:16:14 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Package: indicator-applet 0.3.2-0ubuntu3
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-16.25-generic
SourcePackage: indicator-applet
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-16-generic x86_64

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please try to obtain a backtrace following the instructions at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash and upload the backtrace (as an attachment) to the bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

can you try to run the applet on a command line before clicking on "reload" or adding it to your configuration and see what is written on the command line when it crashes? is there any error in .xsession-errors too?

[Brewster Malevich (brews)]

#Here is whats pushed to .xsession-errors:

** (gnome-panel:1696): WARNING **: panel-applet-frame.c:1363: failed to load applet OAFIID:GNOME_FastUserSwitchApplet (cannot get popup component):
Unknown CORBA exception id: 'IDL:omg.org/CORBA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0'

(gnome-panel:1696): Gtk-WARNING **: A floating object was finalized. This means that someone
called g_object_unref() on an object that had only a floating
reference; the initial floating reference is not owned by anyone
and must be removed with g_object_ref_sink()

[Brewster Malevich (brews)]

Here is a backtrace. I've never done this with an applet, so if you need me to correct or run another backtrace I'll be happy to help.

[Brewster Malevich (brews)]

This was left out of the above .xsession-erros when I was cutting and pasting:

** (gnome-panel:1696): WARNING **: Unable to obtain AppletShell interface from control

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the log seems to indicate you don't have gvfs installed, is that correct?

[Brewster Malevich (brews)]

Ok, I solved my problem, but it was a bit weird...
Yes, that is correct I didn't have 'gvfs'. It was broken:

"""
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  gvfs: Depends: libgdu0 (>= 2.29.90) but 2.28.0+git20091012-0ubuntu1 is to be installed
        Recommends: gvfs-backends but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages
"""

So, I followed this to 'udisks' which depends on libparted0 (>=2.2-1). I disabled all 3rd party repos and manually installed 'libparted0'. This caused 'devicekit-disks' and 'libparted1.8-12' to be removed and I was then able to install 'gvfs'. Now my fancy little applets work.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

closing then, that was not a bug in the indicator code but a local installation issue, thank you for the explanation

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the indicator might need to depends on gvfs though...

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

did you have gvfs uninstalled or just in a broken installation state before?

[Brewster Malevich (brews)]

 gvfs was not installed. It was uninstalled after an update just after I had upgraded to lucid. It could not be installed because it claimed it was an 'impossible situation' due to 'unmet dependencies' (I copied the message in my previous comment).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

not sure how that happened but uninstalling gvfs lead to uninstall indicator-applet on current lucid so it seems fixed now

[Brewster Malevich (brews)]

Agreed.

[Spang (hetkot)]

I suffered from this bug.

It would seem that it is some kind of migration error. Following faulty dependencies all the way lead to libparted1.8-12 that needed to be libparted0. Once that was switched most things got fixed. It think it is an important remark though, since it forced the removal of gvfs and all dependent packages all the way up to ubuntu-desktop.

To be honest a bit of an unpleasant struggle, but glad it got fixed, by what I read here.