Lubuntu 15.04 - No power indicator in applet indicator

[Pablo César Galdo Regueiro]

There's no battery/power indicator in taskbar.
xfce4-power-manager is not set as default power manager in LXSession configuration, but setting it by hand doesn't solve the indicator issue.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
Package: lubuntu-default-settings 0.42
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.19.0-15.15-generic 3.19.3
Uname: Linux 3.19.0-15-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.17.2-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: LXDE
Date: Mon Apr 20 15:52:37 2015
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-04-20 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Lubuntu 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Alpha amd64 (20150224)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: lubuntu-default-settings
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Walter Lapchynski (wxl)]

does adding the battery monitor lxpanel applet not solve your needs?

[Walter Lapchynski (wxl)]

also lxsession-default-apps has power manager set to "auto," which is what it should be. this is not an issue with lxsession or lubuntu-default-settings.

[Walter Lapchynski (wxl)]

from what i've come to understand, while that battery monitor can work, the intention is to use the plugin provided by xfce4-power-manager. it does seem that something is amiss there, though the plugins package is installed.

[Dmitry Alexandrov (dimzon541)]

as I discovered in my investigation https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-power-manager/+bug/1448399
threre just not lxde_power_manager.so in xfce4-power-manager-plugins package in 15.04

utopic: http://packages.ubuntu.com/utopic/i386/xfce4-power-manager-plugins/filelist
vivid: http://packages.ubuntu.com/vivid/i386/xfce4-power-manager-plugins/filelist

[Menachem Shapiro (menachem)]

I have the same exact issue. I recently upgraded to 15.04. I had the power indicator icon in 14.10, but it disappeared when I upgraded.

I was doing some searching online, and found a lot of people suggesting to going into the xfce4-power-manager-settings and setting "Show tray icon:" to "Always show icon". Some of this information is a couple years old, so it is possible that the answer no longer applies.

When I open xfce4-power-manager-settings, the "Show tray icon" option does not appear.

More online research led me to the following configuration file: ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-power-manager.xml

It looks like older versions of this file had a "Show tray icon" option [see https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=8786], but the one installed in 15.04 does not.

Either this option is no longer supported, or someone left it out accidentally.

Maybe this can lead someone towards a solution for this problem.

[Jev (jev-kuznetsov)]

I've compared xfce4-power-manager.xml on 14.10 to 15.04. Both do not have "Show tray icon" option, so this is not something that disappeared between versions 14 and 15

[Dmitry Alexandrov (dimzon541)]

@Jev (jev-kuznetsov)

tray-icon is no more xfce4-power-manager buildin function.
tray-icon is now xfce4-power-manager-plugins feature.

15.04 distribution lacks this files in plugin package (lxde_power_manager.so in xfce4-power-manager-plugins):
this is 14.10 package content: http://packages.ubuntu.com/utopic/i386/xfce4-power-manager-plugins/filelist
this is 15.04 package content: http://packages.ubuntu.com/vivid/i386/xfce4-power-manager-plugins/filelist

[Israel Dahl (israeldahl)]

Hi I want to comment that running xfce4-power-manager used to show a tray Icon in JWM, however this is no longer the case in 15.04 as well.
So, I would say this is an issue of xfce4-power-manager no longer using
 _NET_SYSTEM_TRAY_Sn
For the app. This is highly unfortunate as, systemd also made upower lose functionality drastically so my fallback battery indicator that I used no longer compiles, and would require a rewrite to use dbus rather than just upower.

[Schneider (schneider-b)]

Hi,

Upon Israels reply I did a random search, sharing the same bug ever since, so I was able to find this workaround, which solved it for me:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/624797/problem-with-battery-indicator-in-lubuntu-15-04

It basically updates xfce power manager inlcuding plugins to 1.5.0.
For me, being on a laptop, it is critical to have control over screen brightness, that's why the battery monitor didn't cut it for me.

[A. Liang (d-launchpad-3-atliang)]

By following the URL provided by Schneider, I managed to have the battery indicator back to work on Lubuntu 15.04(upgraded from 14.10). Here are my manual installation steps of xubuntu-staging without using 'apt-get dist-upgrade:'

1. goto https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev/+archive/ubuntu/xubuntu-staging/+sourcepub/5186374/+listing-archive-extra and download packages based on your architecture. For example:
    $ wget
https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev/+archive/ubuntu/xubuntu-staging/+files/xfce4-power-manager-data_1.5.2-0ubuntu1%7E15.10_all.deb
    $ wget https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev/+archive/ubuntu/xubuntu-staging/+files/xfce4-power-manager-plugins_1.5.2-0ubuntu1%7E15.10_amd64.deb
    $ wget https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev/+archive/ubuntu/xubuntu-staging/+files/xfce4-power-manager_1.5.2-0ubuntu1%7E15.10_amd64.deb
2. get the latest libxfce4panel-2.0. For example:
    $ wget http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ubuntu/ubuntu/ubuntu/pool/universe/x/xfce4-panel/libxfce4panel-2.0-4_4.12.0-3ubuntu2_amd64.deb
3. install libxfce4-ui-2-0 for one of he required dependencies:
    $ sudo apt-get install libxfce4ui-2-0
4. update xfce4-power-manager to 1.5.x by installing .deb files downloaded in step 1 and 2:
    $ sudo dpkg -i libxfce4panel-2.0-4_4.12.0-3ubuntu2_amd64.deb xfce4-power-manager-data_1.5.2-0ubuntu1~15.10_all.deb xfce4-power-manager_1.5.2-0ubuntu1~15.10_amd64.deb xfce4-power-manager-plugins_1.5.2-0ubuntu1~15.10_amd64.deb
5. run xfce4-power-manager-settings command from the command line and then check that Status notifications and System tray icon are set to ON.
6. run xfce4-power-manager --restart from the command line