Lost the wicd system tray icon...

[GreyGeek]

Re: Lost the wicd system tray icon...

Yup to the icon, and yup to the pipes.

I decided to replace wicd with KNetworkManger. After I installed it I could never get it out of the disabled state. Deleting the state file or setting the enable option to true had no effect. None of the remedies offered around the net worked.

After several weeks of not appearing in the system tray, wicd's icon will randomly appear, but never from a cold boot. I can ALWAYS get it by logging off and then logging back in, without rebooting. In effect, just restarting the xserver, which is one of two possible causes where I suspect the problem lies, gives me back the wicd icon, plus the HP manager icon which should have appeared too.

The last time I used my HP LaserJet Professional p1606dn duplex printer was on the 14th. Sometime between then and 22nd, it got messed up too, and no longer prints. Here is what updates:

14th Updated: chromium-codecs-ffmpeg, chromium-browser-inspector, chromium-browser, firefox-4.0,
chromium-codecs-ffmpeg, chromium-browser-inspector, chromium-browser
15th Updated: binutils, libtiff4-dev, libtiffxx0c2, libtiff4, libtiff-tools, binutils, libtiff4, libtiffxx0c2, libtiff4-dev, libtiff-tools
16th Updated: tzdata-java, tzdata, libkrb5-dev, krb5-multidev, libk5crypto3, libgssapi-krb5-2, libkrb5-3,
libkrb5support0, libgssrpc4, libkdb5-4, libkadm5srv-mit7, libkadm5clnt-mit7, firefox-4.0, xulrunner-1.9.2,
tzdata-java, libkrb5support0, libk5crypto3, libkrb5-3, libgssapi-krb5-2, libgssrpc4, libkdb5-4,
libkadm5srv-mit7, libkadm5clnt-mit7, krb5-multidev, libkrb5-dev, firefox-4.0, xulrunner-1.9.2
17th Updated: firefox-4.0, xulrunner-1.9.2, firefox-4.0, xulrunner-1.9.2
18th Updated: firefox-4.0
19th Updated: firefox-4.0, xulrunner-1.9.2, firefox-4.0, xulrunner-1.9.2
21st Updated: xulrunner-1.9.2
22nd Installed: linux-image-2.6.32-31-generic, linux-headers-2.6.32-31, linux-headers-2.6.32-31-generic,
linux-image-2.6.32-31-generic, linux-headers-2.6.32-31, linux-headers-2.6.32-31-generic
22nd Updated: linux-generic, linux, linux-image, linux-image-generic, linux-headers-generic, linux-libc-dev,
xulrunner-1.9.2, linux-image-generic, linux-generic, linux-image, linux, linux-headers-generic, linux-libc-dev,
xulrunner-1.9.2

I noticed my printer wouldn't print when I tried to use it right after the kernel update, on the 22nd. However, I don't run that kernel. I installed the 2.6.35-25-generic kernel on Jan 25th and the printer continued to work fine until the March 14th. I pinned the 35-25 kernel so I was surprised to see the 32-31 kernel install, because I had pinned the 35-25, but it did not replace the 35-25 kernel as the default.

When I initially installed the driver for the HP p1606dn USB printer I used the hplip-3.10.9.run script linked from the HP website. It installed and automatically downloaded the hplip-3.10.9-plugin.run proprietary plugin, which recognized the printer immediately and installed the driver.

To try to get the printer to work I removed the 3.10.9 driver, downloaded fresh copies of it and the proprietary plugin and reinstalled it. This time, it failed to automatically install the plugin, complaining about not being able to find the ibus, a complaint which it didn't give the first time. The ibus is my second suspect. When I ran the iBus Preferences app in the Settings menu subdirectory it stated that the ibus daemon wasn't running and did I want to start it? I said yes and it started, displayed the preferences gui and its icon in the system tray. Closing the gui I ran "sudo hp-plugin". I first let it try to connect to the HP site and automatically download and install the proprietary plugin. That failed with some errors in its python scripts (which I didn't capture), so I took the second option and selected the hplip-3.10.9-plugin.run file. The program said the plugin successfully installed, but when it opened the printer selection dialog there were no printers listed and the refresh button didn't help.

I uninstalled the 3.10.9 driver and tried the 3.11.3 driver and plugin. The results were the same.

There is another peculiarity about the printer. When I plug it in, instead of telling me it is a printer I get a notice that a CDROM device has been plugged in. It never did that before this system tray icon problem appeared, which I believe is either an xserver and/or bus problem (d? i?). Here is the CDROM info:

[GreyGeek]

Re: Lost the wicd system tray icon...

Now things are getting weird... really weird...

I haven't done any programming since I retired nearly 3 years ago, contrary to what I thought I'd be doing. My system is LOADED with dev tools and databases and working copies of most of the projects I worked on in the five years before I retired. I decided that I was wasting space and CPU cycles so I deleted ALL my software dev tools, including Qt4, QtCreator and the Qt-SDK, and lots of axillary apps, like Kdbg, KDiff3, web dev tools and docbook documentation tools. I even decided to remove VBox and the hosts I had installed on it. I removed Linux Mint 9 KDE, Aposid, and Natty. I was getting ready to remove my licensed copy of XP Pro when I decided to see if my HP LaserJet Professional p1606dn duplex printer would install on it. Since I hadn't run it since the kernel update a couple days ago the USB ports weren't active. So, I installed the VBox 4.0 guest additions to make the XP USB ports active.


Then I plugged in my HP printer. It was immediately detected as a USB device but before I could click on anything to install it a msg appeared reporting it as a CDROM device, just as my Lucid Host popped up its "you've got a CDROM plugged in" message. Then, just as quick, a dialog box appeared asking if I wanted to install the "HP LaserJet series 1100, 1200, 1400, 1500 and 1600 printer". I said yes. When it was done a dialog box popped up saying the install had failed! Its suggestion was to unplug the printer, turn off the printer, turn on the printer, and plug it in again. Steps I had done many times before on Lucid. At that instant a msg box appeared on Lucid's system tray announcing that the HP printer had been detected and installed. Amazed, I opened KWrite, typed in a line and sent it to the printer, which was now on the list with no warning signs. It printed!!!

XP can't print to it, but who cares! I will probably keep VBox and XP around.

The thought in the back of my occasionally active mind was to save all my good data, passwords, etc, and install Natty, but I think I will put that on hold for a while and see how cleaning up my Lucid goes. The wicd always connects to my wireless regardless of whether the icon appears in the system tray or not, so I can live without that. But, not having access to my new duplex printer is not an option.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Lost the wicd system tray icon...

I am returning to this topic to relay some observations that I have made regarding the wicd icon not loading in the system tray, even though wicd does load and I get an automatic wireless connection. I also noticed that the HP icon and sometimes the KMail icon do not appear.

My first observation is that when I boot into KDE from a cold boot and don't get the wicd or HP icon, if I kill the xserver (Ctl+Alt+Bksp is set to do that) and relog in the wicd and HP icons always load properly in the system tray.

While checking the kernel logs I noticed that apparmor gave a "DENIED" message relating to /sbin/dhclient3.

Possibly related to this was the behavior of my wicd connection. Hovering the mouse over the Wicd system tray icon always showed me connected, even when my browser failed to connect, nor would email work! IF I recycled my wireless connection I could browse again and email would work.

I uses Synaptic to uninstall ALL the packages related to apparmor and rebooted. The msg was gone, of course, and from a cold boot I got all of my system tray icons without having to kill the xserver and log in again. I have not had a network connection disconnect either. I will keep watching to see if this problem is finally solved.