top status bar missing shutdown button, clock, sound icon and more on upgrade to 13.10

Originally posted in bug #1239710 as comment #32

The solution that worked for stachowski-mateusz did not work for my case:

mark@mark-desktop:~$ apt-cache policy indicator-session indicator-datetime
indicator-session:
  Installed: 12.10.5+13.10.20131023.1-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 12.10.5+13.10.20131023.1-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 12.10.5+13.10.20131023.1-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     12.10.5+13.10.20131004-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy/main amd64 Packages
indicator-datetime:
  Installed: 13.10.0+13.10.20131023.2-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 13.10.0+13.10.20131023.2-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 13.10.0+13.10.20131023.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     13.10.0+13.10.20131016.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy/main amd64 Packages
mark@mark-desktop:~$

Originally posted in bug #1239710 as comment #36

Like hufemj (hufemj-yahoo) (#32) I also still experience the issue occasionally on a fully updated Ubuntu 13.10 install.

~$ apt-cache policy indicator-session indicator-datetime
indicator-session:
  Installed: 12.10.5+13.10.20131023.1-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 12.10.5+13.10.20131023.1-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 12.10.5+13.10.20131023.1-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     12.10.5+13.10.20131004-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy/main amd64 Packages
indicator-datetime:
  Installed: 13.10.0+13.10.20131023.2-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 13.10.0+13.10.20131023.2-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 13.10.0+13.10.20131023.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     13.10.0+13.10.20131016.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy/main amd64 Packages

Due to the number of people affected, changing both these to confirmed

Mark,

Would you mind posting a screenshot of what the top bar looks like for you?

Sure. Here are two. One shows the status bar with Dropbox, Network Manager and some other icon. But no gear, no clock and no speaker icon. I believe the Dropbox and Network Manager icons came back because of something I found on the forums, but I don't remember where.

Mark

Here's a screenshot of the clock settings window from System Settings. Everything is disabled. Maybe this has something to do with the missing clock in the top status bar?

Mark

Tahr with the -2 linux image, "gear" missing from unity panel. Just updated to -4 let me reboot.

Rebooted, see comment #7, "gear" is back. Experience lately it will suddenly disappear. Let me see if I can find out when.

Still having the problem repeatedly where the gear icon, clock and more don't show up in the top status bar. Repeatedly. Every time. But things have gotten both better and worse.

I found that if I select gnome or gnome flashback that everything is fine. That is, the gear is there and I can pull down the shutdown/logout/reboot selection. It's a little weird in that the time did not show up until Network Time was turned off.

So that's the 'gotten better' part.

If I go back to 'ubuntu (default)' at login I no longer get the top status bar OR the menu bar. Both are gone completely.

Also, I'm not sure if this is how it's supposed to work or not. If my windows manager is ubuntu(default) and I let the screen time out so that I get the login screen if I select gnome to login it's still in the ubuntu(default) windows manager, which means no top status bar and no menu bar.

Hi, I am experiencing the same problem. I have upgraded to 13.10 from 13.04 and after I log in the top menu (status) bar displays the name of the current open application and rest is blank. So, if I have a terminal open it displays "Terminal" on left hand side and rest of menu bar is empty.

For me, it is not intermittent. At no point has anything else been visible in the top bar.

uname -a
Linux Ubuntu-Fileserver.localdomain 3.11.0-15-generic #22-Ubuntu SMP Mon Dec 2 23:38:28 UTC 2013 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

Hi, Whoops … It turns out my 'problem' was user error. I had inadvertently logged in with session option 'Xsession' [Indicated by big filled circle beside my user name !!]. Changed to Ubuntu default and it worked a treat. No problems.

I'm wondering if this is a Python issue. Under 13.04 I needed Python 3 and uninstalled Python 2 only to find that Dropbox would no longer work. So I reinstalled Python 2 and played with the symbolic links so that both 2 and 3 would work. While it looks like both Python 2 and 3 are working as they should following the upgrade, I enabled apport and a "Sorry, Ubuntu 13.10 has experienced an internal error" pop-up displayed. Looking into the details, a HookError_medibuntu message showed a Python syntax error in medibuntu.py, which turned out to be a Python2 vs. Python3 error. Apport, or whatever it is that generated the HookError_medibuntu error is using Python 3 instead of Python 2.

Here's the code that generates the syntax error. The except clause is written for Python 2:

def add_info(report):
    try:
        if report['Package'].split()[1].find('medibuntu') != -1:
            report['CrashDB'] = 'medibuntu'
    except ValueError, e:
        return

I was suspecting maybe the changes under 13.04 that I made in the links for Python were the source of the problem. But, I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 13.10 in VirtualBox and the links looked to be consistent with the upgrade installation. Specifically:

mark@mark-desktop:~/Desktop$ which python
/usr/bin/python
mark@mark-desktop:~/Desktop$ ls -la /usr/bin/python
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Sep 19 14:26 /usr/bin/python -> python2.7
mark@mark-desktop:~/Desktop$ which python3
/usr/bin/python3

I'm getting closer. I found that unity-panel-service wasn't running. However, I can run it in a terminal window and it works. That is, I get the date, time, sound and gear icons in the top status bar. E.g.

/usr/lib/unity/unity-panel-service &

A number of warning messages are displayed:
** (unity-panel-service:7216): WARNING **: Unable to support GtkImageType: 0

** (unity-panel-service:7216): WARNING **: Unable to support GtkImageType: 0

(unity-panel-service:7216): IDO-WARNING **: Can't load user avatar icon: Error opening file: No such file or directory

(unity-panel-service:7216): IDO-WARNING **: Can't load user avatar icon: Error opening file: No such file or directory

(unity-panel-service:7216): IDO-WARNING **: Can't load user avatar icon: Error opening file: No such file or directory

But if I log out and log in again, still no sound, date/time, gear icons. I have to manually re-run unity-panel-service.

Can someone with this problem please attach their ~/.cache/upstart/unity-panel-service.log. If unity-panel-service is crashing on login, this log might tell us why.

If you're experiencing issues with a single indicator, please attach the log for that indicator (~/.cache/upstart/indicator-XXX.log).

Thanks!

There's no upstart folder under ~/.cache. Attached is a screenshot of what's there.

Thanks.

This bug is very annoying. I just downloaded the most recent 13.10 ubuntu and intalled it... and there is no "system menu" button. I've been running Lubuntu for as long as it has existed and it's really frustrating to have bugs like this in the current version of ubuntu.
BTW, I don't have a indicator log file, but I've attached the unity-panel-service file...

I don't have any indicator logs in ~/.cache/upstart and unity-panel-service.log doesn't differ when indicators are missing.

is that still an issue?

seb128: yeah it is, its tied to having auto login enabled from what I can see on https://bugs.launchpad.net/indicator-datetime/+bug/1244285

I have never had auto login enabled and have had this problem since upgrading to 13.10. It's still there in 14.04 100% of the time. The workaround I have been using is to open a terminal window and enter the following command:

 /usr/lib/unity/unity-panel-service&

I was really disappointed that upgrading to 14.04 didn't fix the issue.

I have created test user accounts and found that every user experiences the problem.

Also, the icons are present in the login screen.

Another workaround is to use something other than Unity. Gnome works just fine.

experiencing the same problem with 14.10. not in the beginning, it was fine for a couple of months. an upgrade in the last 2 weeks cased to disappear the shutdown entry and user menu.

it looks like was known before from gnome panel, where there are a lot of "how to reset" entries in google. but this seems not to work here?

gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/panel
killall gnome-panel

I'm experiencing the same problem with Ubuntu 14.04. Manually starting unity-panel-service does "fix" the problem for me.

What I don't understand is why the problem isn't reported by the OS. All of these indicator applications are launched and running, and none of them notice that indicator-applet-appmenu isn't running! When I go to the "Panel" setting in unity-tweak-tool, how come I don't see an error message there either? Why is there nothing in dmesg? When I manually launch an indicator app from the command line, it doesn't report any errors either. How is possible that all of these programs interact with the panel, but none of them notice that it's not there?!?!?!!?

recently it happened with 15.10 usb install with persistent storage that the panel lost logout, restart. i booted then without casper-rw, i.e. removing the persistent flag to compare where the buttons are available (see here for boot options: http://shallowsky.com/blog/linux/install/ubuntu-persistent-live-cd.html ) . then i used dconf dump / > dump.conf both times and compared the two files. the difference is:

+[apps/indicator-session]
+suppress-logout-menuitem=true
+suppress-restart-menuitem=true
+suppress-shutdown-menuitem=true
+suppress-logout-restart-shutdown=true

i am still wondering what triggers ubuntu to make these settings without me wanting it to do it.

I still get this occasionally in 14.04, but less frequently than it used to be.

I am new to using Linux. My unit is running on Mint 19 with Gnome 3.28.2 desktop environment. I am experiencing this bug as well; after initial login, icons in top bar are complete but, after I lock the desktop then login again, icons for date, speaker, battery, wifi, and buttons to reboot/shutdown are all missing. I have to execute "alt+F2, r" command for all the icons reappear on the top bar.

Any way to permanently fix this?