nm-applet doesn’t start on secondary X session

[Anders Kaseorg]

If you use the “Switch User” function to log into multiple accounts at the same time, nm-applet doesn’t start on any of the secondary sessions. ~/.xsession-errors has this error, which also happens if you try to start nm-applet manually:

An instance of nm-applet is already running.

If you log out of the original account while connected to a wireless network, the network gets disconnected out from under everyone else, leaving none of the other accounts with an easy way to reconnect. (It is possible for one of the other accounts to start nm-applet manually now—but only one.)

There’s on reason multiple accounts shouldn’t be able to control NetworkManager at the same time (assuming they have the appropriate permissions).

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

This is a known issue in NM which has been open for quite a while -- the issue should be resolved with the upcoming 0.9 release.

Added 'multi-user' tag so I can go back and sort through duplicates.

As a workaround, you should be able to kill the previous instance of nm-applet and start it again in the next session.