Strange icon in notification area

John_Jason_Jordan · 2014-08-21 06:49:31

I have a fresh install of Xubuntu 14.04.1 as of a couple of days ago. Just now I noticed this strange icon in the notification area. I can left click, right click, double click, or hover over it and nothing happens - no popups, nada.

Notification_area_icon

I took a screenshot of it and enlarged it. I uploaded it to Box.com. I hope y'all can see it.

Edit: OK, it is not visible. What did I do wrong?

Last edited by John_Jason_Jordan (2014-08-21 15:52:44)

MountainDewManiac · 2014-08-21 13:38:30

Try uploading your screenshot to zimagez. That should be a direct option in XFCE's screen-capture software, and it has always worked here, AfaIK. I think it's what Toz uses to post images in his thread about the new developments in XFCE (although I could be mistaken).

John_Jason_Jordan · 2014-08-21 15:54:01

OK, finally got it visible. Thanks for the zimagez tip.

ToZ · 2014-08-21 17:23:21

If you go to Panel Properties >> Items, click on Notification Area then the Properties button, which apps are listed? And if you "hide" them one at a time, does it disappear (or rather moved to arrowed list)? That might help identify which app it is.

John_Jason_Jordan · 2014-08-21 19:47:18

ToZ wrote:

If you go to Panel Properties >> Items, click on Notification Area then the Properties button, which apps are listed? And if you "hide" them one at a time, does it disappear (or rather moved to arrowed list)? That might help identify which app it is.

That's the first thing I tried. I marked every item on the list to be hidden, but the strange icon remains. But then, that "hidden" feature doesn't always work properly. But reading through the list revealed several that I have never heard of:

systray icon
ibus panel
autopackage-frontend-gtk
bluemindo.py
scp-dbus-service.py
Florence
swt

I searched Google for these, but couldn't come up with images of what their icons look like, or if they even have icons. I also tried to look in /usr/share/icons, but there are thousands of icons in there scattered all over dozens of folders and subfolders.

I was really hoping someone here might recognize it.

ToZ · 2014-08-21 20:11:51

John_Jason_Jordan wrote:

That's the first thing I tried. I marked every item on the list to be hidden, but the strange icon remains.

Is it possible that its in the Indicator Plugin instead? If so, and its an indicator,:

ps -ef | grep indicator

...will show all installed indicators. There will also be an xfce4-indicator.log file in ~/.cache/upstart that might be useful.

John_Jason_Jordan · 2014-08-21 21:57:12

ToZ wrote:

Is it possible that its in the Indicator Plugin instead? If so, and its an indicator,:
ps -ef | grep indicator
will show all installed indicators. There will also be an xfce4-indicator.log file in ~/.cache/upstart that might be useful.

Thanks for the suggestion. Here is all it came up with:

ps -ef | grep indicator
2015 1872 0 Aug18 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-application/indicator-application-service
2031 1872 0 Aug18 ? 00:00:06 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-power/indicator-power-service
16411 16392 0 14:50 pts/3 00:00:00 grep --color=auto indicator

The first two are executables, and I don't know what the third one is, except that it doesn't look like it has anything to do with the situation.

There is no xfce4-indicator.log in ~/.cache/upstart.

Last edited by John_Jason_Jordan (2014-08-21 21:59:01)

ToZ · 2014-08-21 22:07:50

John_Jason_Jordan wrote:

There is no xfce4-indicator.log in ~/.cache/upstart.

Sorry about that, its in ~/.cache, and its called xfce4-indicator-plugin.log.

Have you confirmed whether it shows up in the notification plugin or the indicator plugin? Try moving the plugins around and see which one it moves with.

John_Jason_Jordan · 2014-08-21 23:31:19

ToZ wrote:

John_Jason_Jordan wrote:
There is no xfce4-indicator.log in ~/.cache/upstart.
Sorry about that, its in ~/.cache, and its called xfce4-indicator-plugin.log.
Have you confirmed whether it shows up in the notification plugin or the indicator plugin? Try moving the plugins around and see which one it moves with.

There is no xfce-indicator.log anywhere in ~/cache or any of the subfolders. Wonder where Ubuntu decided to put it.

As for the indicator plugin, I didn't have it on the panel, in fact, I didn't even know it existed. So just now I added it to the panel and the mystery icon is not in it. I moved both plugins around but no change.

Now I have to go find out what is the difference between the notification area and the indicator plugin. I might prefer the indicator plugin and just get rid of the notification area. That would solve the problem, although it is an unsatisfying solution. I'm curious about this silly icon.

ToZ · 2014-08-22 01:08:01

John_Jason_Jordan wrote:

There is no xfce-indicator.log anywhere in ~/cache or any of the subfolders. Wonder where Ubuntu decided to put it.

Perhaps because you weren't using the plugin.
So the icon is definitely in the notification area.

Now I have to go find out what is the difference between the notification area and the indicator plugin. I might prefer the indicator plugin and just get rid of the notification area. That would solve the problem, although it is an unsatisfying solution. I'm curious about this silly icon.

The notification area is your typical systray. The indicator plugin is for Ubuntu's indicators (not sure if other distros use this as well).

Another thing you can try is to go to Settings Manager >> Settings Editor. Select the xfce4-panel channel and search through the plugins properties for the "systray" plugin. It will have a child property called "names-visible" that will list all of the icons. Maybe you can use the process of eliimination to see which one it is.

John_Jason_Jordan · 2014-08-22 03:47:04

ToZ wrote:

Another thing you can try is to go to Settings Manager >> Settings Editor. Select the xfce4-panel channel and search through the plugins properties for the "systray" plugin. It will have a child property called "names-visible" that will list all of the icons. Maybe you can use the process of eliimination to see which one it is.

I looked in the settings editor and the list of icons is the same as the list when I look at the properties for the notification area. As I mentioned before, there are several that I have never heard of, and I can't find much about what their standard icons look like. Also, I know that the "hidden" option doesn't work well.

One thing that I noticed is that the indicator plugin says that changes will not appear until you refresh the panel. I don't know how to do that. Years ago when I used the old Gnome it was killall gnome-panel, so maybe it's something like killall xfce4-panel.

ToZ · 2014-08-22 12:40:41

John_Jason_Jordan wrote:

One thing that I noticed is that the indicator plugin says that changes will not appear until you refresh the panel. I don't know how to do that. Years ago when I used the old Gnome it was killall gnome-panel, so maybe it's something like killall xfce4-panel.

You can restart the panel with:

xfce4-panel -r

John_Jason_Jordan · 2014-08-22 15:26:32

ToZ wrote:

You can restart the panel with:
xfce4-panel -r

That was very interesting. When I entered the command it did not appear to restart the panel (although it might have - this is a fast computer), but for sure it removed the notification area. I have the polytonic Greek keyboard enabled, and the keypress to switch keyboards is Ctrl-Shift, and xfce4-panel -r also switched the keyboard from English to Greek. I looked in the panel properties and notification area was listed as still installed, but grayed out. I tried xfce-panel -r a second time and this time it just switched the keyboard. I checked the man page for xfce4-panel and you are absolutely right; the -r option is supposed to restart it. It says nothing about causing other keypresses.

Finally, I decided to reboot. This made no change to the status of the notification area; it was still listed in the panel properties as installed, but grayed out. I decided to remove the notification area and reinstall it, which I was able to do in spite of it being grayed out. When it appeared in the panel it was extremely thin, only about five or six pixels high. I had to enable the border around it to see it at all. I looked at its properties and the only option that might affect its height was the minimum icon size. I set it up to 40 pixels, but it made no difference in the height of the notification area. After reinstalling it the panel properties now shows it without being grayed out. And the funny icon that started this trek no longer appears.

This is a fresh install of Xubuntu 14.04.1 as of last Sunday evening. I am wondering if I have stumbled on a bug. I am also wondering if the odd keypress action of xfce4-panel -r is connected to my problem with the compose key (see separate thread that I started contemporaneously with this one).

Edit: I should have added that, although this is a fresh install of 14.04.1, I have long kept /home in a separate partition and when I did the fresh install I told it to use the existing /home partition, so it is possible that there is a setting somewhere that is causing this odd behavior.

Last edited by John_Jason_Jordan (2014-08-22 16:43:34)

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#1 2014-08-21 06:49:31

Strange icon in notification area

#2 2014-08-21 13:38:30

Re: Strange icon in notification area

#3 2014-08-21 15:54:01

Re: Strange icon in notification area

#4 2014-08-21 17:23:21

Re: Strange icon in notification area

#5 2014-08-21 19:47:18

Re: Strange icon in notification area

#6 2014-08-21 20:11:51

Re: Strange icon in notification area

#7 2014-08-21 21:57:12

Re: Strange icon in notification area

#8 2014-08-21 22:07:50

Re: Strange icon in notification area

#9 2014-08-21 23:31:19

Re: Strange icon in notification area

#10 2014-08-22 01:08:01

Re: Strange icon in notification area

#11 2014-08-22 03:47:04

Re: Strange icon in notification area

#12 2014-08-22 12:40:41

Re: Strange icon in notification area

#13 2014-08-22 15:26:32

Re: Strange icon in notification area

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