system load indicator does not show memory usage, ignoring preferences

[Steve Cohen]

Running Ubuntu 22.04:

First, the System Load Indicator (indicator-multiload) did not respect my preferences to display Memory Usage, which is the only thing I need displayed in the upper bar. I could click on the indicator and a drop down would show me the memory load and other statistics, but I wanted it constantly displayed in the bar. This used to work, before upgrading to 22.04.

Now we come to a more serious problem: I started messing around with the Preference tab for System Load Indicator. I thought increasing the "System Monitor Width" setting above 40 pixels might help. I increased it way more than that, perhaps to 600. The system stopped working. The mouse refused to move. No keystrokes did anything. Eventually, the screen went black and pushed me out to the login page, but upon logging in, the same problems persisted.

I finally tried doing an emergency root login and doing
apt remove indicator-multiload.
Now I could log in and have a normally functioning system. But I wanted the indicator, so I did sudo apt install indicator-multiload,
and the problems returned. Evidently some bad configuration setting had persisted through the removal. So I removed it again, and that's where I am now.

So a few questions:
1) What is the "System Monitor Width" setting in Preferences for, and should it not prevent a catastrophically bad value from being entered?
2) In what file does this application store this preference, so that I might fix it and reinstall the monitor, and run the system?
3) How can I force the indicator to display the memory usage in the top bar as I want to do.

[Steve Cohen (scohen)]

Workaround is here: https://askubuntu.com/a/732313/310274

[Anthony Chubb (chubbant)]

I have a similar problem with the load indicator in the upper bar. But mine only shows me the tail end of the wifi usage block and none of the CPU or memory blocks. It also flickers strangely and appears to expand in width briefly (faster than I can see) because the drop-down menu is occasionally available to the left of the block. It's as though another black icon is pasted over the indicator bars I want to see, competing with the load monitor.
Right-click works to open the drop-down menu (and full load monitor panel).
This section can be hidden entirely by switching off the Ubuntu Appindicators under Extension Manager - could it be that this section is faulty and not allowing sufficient space for the load monitor?

[Steve Cohen (scohen)]

I concur with Anthony Chubb's comments, which were indeed the original impetus that motivated me to begin tinkering with the indicator width in the first.place. I forgot to mention this in the wake of the more catastrophic problems that occurred when I tried to change the width. But had these symptoms not existed, I never would have bothered messing with the width. My ideal state would be to see the "Mem: 6.2 GB" text that I used to see, and not flickering.

As to my Question 2 above, I did discover that this setting was maintained in dconf under the key of /de/mh21/indicator-multiload/, as indicated in my link above. Navigating there, I was able to change the width back to 40 and reinstall the indicator without breaking the system.

However, I only see the graphical display, which is better than nothing, but not ideal, and it does flicker.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[girto (patspiper)]

Ubuntu 22.04.1 here. The load indicator flickers and expands briefly (same as Anthony Chubb)

[Mingun (alexander-sergey)]

I've created a separate ticket for flickering -- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-multiload/+bug/2003195

[Steve Cohen (stevecoh1)]

This problem, which seemed to have been fixed in Ubuntu 23.04 is back in Ubuntu 23.10. I have indicated in "Preferences" that I want Memory Usage shown in the panel and nothing else. It is not doing that.