No appindicator in Ubuntu's Unity

[digitalfreedom]

It is my understanding after much reading in forums that WICD does not work in Ubuntu's Unity interface because it lacks support for the application indicators used in Unity. Such support would be much appreciated since Ubuntu 11.04 is only a couple of weeks from release.

I'm using WICD 1.7.0 on Ubuntu 11.04

[emelce (mtlang)]

it looks like there's no wicd indicator. unfortunately network-manager doesn't work with our roaming-wireless-system from ruckus...

[reyammer (reyammer)]

If with 'wicd indicator', you mean the indicator showed in the attachment, then I think it is not an issue of wicd but it is related with unity's configuration.

Did you try to add Wicd to the whitelist of the Unity's systray panel?

This should solve your problem:
1. launch in a terminal 'dconf-editor' (you need the 'dconf-tools' package)
2. go to 'desktop' -> 'unity' -> 'panel'
3. add 'Wicd' to the 'systray-whitelist'

Let me know if this solves your problem!

[reyammer (reyammer)]

Here (https://bugs.launchpad.net/wicd/+bug/783625/comments/4) you can find a script that should automatically solve this problem.
Let me know if you have some problems with it.

[xkill (info-xkill)]

I executed this script and after the next restart the Wicd indicator is shown.

Thank you for this workaround!

[David Paleino (dpaleino)]

How am I supposed to fix this?

I don't think the add-wicd-to-whitelist.sh script is something I could use to fix this upstream. Should I detect if Unity is running at runtime? This sounds crazy :)

IMVHO effectively disabling the systray is a very very very bad design decision. What I can do, though, is *try to* provide an "appindicator", or whatever that's called -- but to me, that sounds much like reinventing the tray icon.

I never did that, so I need some time to document myself and do some tests (and maybe I'll need your help, since I'm not running Ubuntu) before actually implementing this in WICD.

Kindly,
David

[David Paleino (dpaleino)]

For future self-reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6034323/python-appindicator-to-make-tomate-unity-compliant

[digitalfreedom (digitalfreedom64-gmail)]

Not sure how much help can be at this point. I decided some months back
that
I don't like the direction Unity is heading so I dumped Ubuntu.

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 2:02 PM, David Paleino <email address hidden> wrote:

> How am I supposed to fix this?
>
> I don't think the add-wicd-to-whitelist.sh script is something I could
> use to fix this upstream. Should I detect if Unity is running at
> runtime? This sounds crazy :)
>
> IMVHO effectively disabling the systray is a very very very bad design
> decision. What I can do, though, is *try to* provide an "appindicator",
> or whatever that's called -- but to me, that sounds much like
> reinventing the tray icon.
>
> I never did that, so I need some time to document myself and do some
> tests (and maybe I'll need your help, since I'm not running Ubuntu)
> before actually implementing this in WICD.
>
> Kindly,
> David
>
> ** Changed in: wicd
> Assignee: (unassigned) => David Paleino (dpaleino)
>
> ** Changed in: wicd
> Importance: Undecided => Wishlist
>
> ** Summary changed:
>
> - No connection indicator in Ubuntu's Unity
> + No appindicator in Ubuntu's Unity
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/761326
>
> Title:
> No appindicator in Ubuntu's Unity
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/wicd/+bug/761326/+subscriptions
>

[Mark Bennison (mark-bennison)]

In Ubuntu 13.04, whitelisting has been removed completely so now there is no systray indicator for wicd.

[Gard Kristian Hauge (gardhauge)]

As Mark points out, this is back in Ubuntu 13.04, and now without a workaround (whitelist), so I guess it's more important to fix this now than before.
Anyone who knows if this will be addressed?
Wicd works absurdely much better than network-manager on my computer, with the single exception of the appIndicator icon. I'm going to use wicd anyway, but it would be nice to know if there's plans for a fix.

[Mark Bennison (mark-bennison)]

I came across this article a while ago which may help: http://www.webupd8.org/2013/05/how-to-get-systray-whitelist-back-in.html

I haven't tried this yet so your mileage may vary - not sure I am comfortable with a patched version of Unity.

[Michael D. Adams (mdmkolbe)]

This patch adds AppIndicator support to wicd. The attached patch is relative to 1.7.2.4-4 in Ubuntu's distribution of wicd but it should easily port to the repository version.

Because of how AppIndicator works, I had to change a couple of things. First, AppIndicator does not support tooltips or actions on clicking or right-clicking the icon. I thus added a menu item at the top of the menu that has the text of the tooltip as its label and that when clicked brings up the GUI. Second, AFAICT, AppIndicator does not support notification on PRELIGHT which wicd uses to trigger a rescan. I thus added a menu item for explicitly triggering a rescan.

Thanks go to David Paleino (dpaleino) for comment #6. It helped me figure out how to implement this.

[Martin (cyderia8530)]

@ Michael Many thanks for this patch, it works well for me (Ubuntu 13.04 64-bit). I hope this patch gets accepted and the bug marked as fixed.

[Eliyahu Orzitzer (e-orz)]

Same problem with Ubuntu 14.04 64bit.

@Michael Thanks for your patch. Works beutifully.
If anyone wants to apply this patch, please install python-appindicator, it's a required dependency.

[Jorge Morais (jorgemorais)]

I have the same problem here with Ubuntu 14.10. I adopted Wicd because network-manager keeps using 100% cpu.
Should not the title of this bug be changed to "Wicd tray icon does not show on Unity"? If the title was better, maybe developers would pay more attention.

[Pieter Leclerc (pieterleclerc-deactivatedaccount)]

Patch applied. Thanks!
Can you try again?

[Anmol Ghosh (anmol-ghosh)]

I used patch with Wicd 1.7.2.4 on ubuntu 14.04. Worked like a charm. The patch should be accepted to original repo.

[weesnich (weesnich)]

Patch not working with wicd 1.7.4 and Ubuntu 16.04.

patching file /usr/share/wicd/gtk/wicd-client.py
Hunk #1 FAILED at 11.
Hunk #2 succeeded at 67 with fuzz 2 (offset 18 lines).
Hunk #3 FAILED at 138.
Hunk #4 FAILED at 519.
Hunk #5 succeeded at 1202 with fuzz 2 (offset 270 lines).
3 out of 5 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file /usr/share/wicd/gtk/wicd-client.py.rej

:(