Bitcoin-Qt 0.6.2 for Ubuntu 12.04 invisible in systray, no global menu #1242

After the update, the program does not appear in the system tray. Also there is no global menu.

Same problem here. It would usually show up in the system tray and I would have a menu -- until I encrypted my wallet. Now there's no menu on the top bar of Unity, and nowit doesn't appear either in the system tray or in the side bar menu.

Also (different issue, but I'll stick it in this comment and let a dev decide what to do with it): The .lock file is not removed on exit. Therefore starting Bitcoin-Qt will fail unless I go in and manually delete the lock file from the ./bitcoin directory.

I have the same problem: no icon in the top panel (system tray?) on Linux Mint, Gnome Desktop. Bitcoin-qt is running, though (can see it in process list and it's updating the log).

The only way I know to get the Bitcon-qt window is to stop the process and restart it.

This appeared just recently, some time after installyng 0.6.2, for no apparent reason (other than maybe updating the system).

Could you guys try with a clean data-dir and see if there is anything special in the debug.log. Seems to be a weird issue, as our GUI-master is on Ubuntu, too I guess...

If clean data-dir, then the problem disappears. debug.log After Update http://clck.ru/d/bq5rKXYN19Ag8 After Clean http://clck.ru/d/RCZsHvTt19AgA

Which directory is data-dir?

I tried cleaning (deleting) ~/.bitcoin but bitcoin wouldn't start after that. Then I had to restore the directory from an old backup (from 3 weeks ago, that is before the problem and probably before the 0.6.2 upgrade). The problem is still there.

I described my problem in a bit more detail here: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3832/bitcoin-qt-icon-not-showing-in-top-edge-panel-linux-mint

This is also a problem in 0.6.3

@rebroad Is this true with a clean data-dir? What are your observations with current Git master?

@Diapolo This is also a problem with current git master also.

If I delete ~/.bitcoin then the tray icon does appear, but a few seconds after the main window appears (once blocks start downloading).

Can you post a screenshot that shows the missing menu and tray-icon? Perhaps @laanwj Should take a look at this, I guess he is also using Linux, while I'm on Windows. Hard to debug, as on Windows this is not an issue.

@Diapolo I don't really understand the reason for the screenshot request, but can provide one if you tell me where to upload it to.

I don't want to see the "no tray-icon" ^^, but want to ensure which menu is missing, as I was not sure about that one. Just use http://tinypic.com for such a thing.

@Diapolo the only thing that shows is the icon on far left for restoring windows.there are no menus nor a tray icon.

I'm running on 12.04 and though I don't have this specific issue, I had another issue with Unity, with minimized windows that refused to come back: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/1001498 . But they didn't take it serious upstream.

I find it strange that Unity manages to mess up a well-behaved Qt program. The problem is that Unity hooks plugins into various things (qt menu, qt tray icon, application management) which are in varying states of maturity.

You might (or might not) have luck building it yourself instead of using the static build.

I'm also having this problem, using the Bitcoin from the bitcoin.org-recommended PPA on Ubuntu 12.04. I had the tray icon for a little bit when I started with a clean ~/.bitcoin, but then I copied over my wallet.dat and it started downloading blocks, and today my menu and tray icon are gone.

Is there any sort of debug information I can provide?

@interfect can you try building from source, and see whether it still happens?

Is there a single, unified page that explains exactly what packages to install and what commands to run on a stock Ubuntu 12.04 system to build from source? Because if so, yes I can.

On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 1:57 PM, Wladimir J. van der Laan < notifications@github.com> wrote:

@interfect https://github.com/interfect can you try building from source, and see whether it still happens?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/1242#issuecomment-8136908.

doc/readme-qt.rst

Also there's the packages: appmenu-qt sni-qt

Those provide plugins for qt to export the appmenu and tray icon respectively to unity. Maybe try installing/uninstalling/upgrading them.

I tried to remove package appmenu-qt, now I see the menu, but not the tray icon.

I also noticed that when I try to execute bitcoin-qt again, the program throw me an error because is already running, while this error message is shown, appears the tray icon, when I close the error message box, the tray icon disappears.

It would be wonderful if someone knowledgeable in the intricacies of Unity could look at this. I cannot help you further here, and my previous tries to get help from the Unity team weren't exactly succesful. Also I still cannot reproduce the problem.

<b>Can you try out the .tar.gz blob and deinstalling the .deb package? I think this will work around the problem for now as the .tar.gz isn't linked against any of the fancy stuff</b>

I reported this as a bug against appmenu-qt, no response from the devs there at all.

On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 10:29 PM, Wladimir J. van der Laan < notifications@github.com> wrote:

It would be wonderful if someone knowledgeable in the intricacies of Unity could look at this. I cannot help you further here, and my previous tries to get help from the Unity team weren't exactly succesful.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/1242#issuecomment-8641515.

I suspect it has something to do with Unity regarding the first window opened somehow as main window. In the case of bitcoin this is the splash screen. Getting rid of the splash screen is on the TODO list (#1028), so if that's the case the problem will solve itself eventually.

That could be it. Of the two Qt apps I use that exhibit Unity menu issues (Bitcoin and Retroshare), both have splash screens. For some reason RetroShare's icons still show up, but they are dynamic and may be set up differently than Bitcoin's.

Are there any Qt apps with splash screens in the official Ubuntu repositories?

On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 11:30 PM, Wladimir J. van der Laan < notifications@github.com> wrote:

I suspect it has something to do with Unity regarding the first window opened somehow as main window. In the case of bitcoin this is the splash screen. Getting rid of the splash screen is on the TODO list, so if that's the case the problem will solve itself eventually.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/1242#issuecomment-8642897.

This happens also to me in Ubuntu 12.10 with Bitcoin version v0.8.1.0-g34d62a8-beta.

There's something curious about it: when I launch it for the first time after a reboot, the splash screen lasts for longer, and both menus and tray icon are hidden after application launch. If I close the application and launch it a second time, it takes less time, and both menu and tray icon appear.

Even when the menu bar is invisible, I can press and release the alt key quickly to get the HUD, and access the menu entries from there by typing.

I believe the time it takes between launching the application and having the main window appear is key to solve this issue. There's probably a time limit somewhere that is being reached.

The time limit idea is interesting. 0.8 starts up much faster than 0.7 did, and the other day the menu and tray icon worked properly for the first time in months. Unfortunately, that only happened once. On Mar 24, 2013 2:10 PM, "Jean-Pierre Rupp" notifications@github.com wrote:

This happens also to me in Ubuntu 12.10 with Bitcoin version v0.8.1.0-g34d62a8-beta.

There's something curious about it: when I launch it for the first time after a reboot, the splash screen lasts for longer, and both menus and tray icon are hidden after application launch. If I close the application and launch it a second time, it takes less time, and both menu and tray icon appear.

Even when the menu bar is invisible, I can press and release the alt key quickly to get the HUD, and access the menu entries from there by typing.

I believe the time it takes between launching the application and having the main window appear is key to solve this issue. There's probably a time limit somewhere that is being reached.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/1242#issuecomment-15369307 .

Interesting, so a time limit may be part of the picture. Though this is confusing, and would make this impossible to fix 100% in cases as linux is not a hard realtime OS. And bitcoin certainly isn't the only program that can be slow to start. I wonder if there is a way to hold off the time limit.

I have the same problem with ubuntu 12.10, and bitcoin-qt 0.8.1-quantal1, the incon only appears sometimes but generally it doesnt appears.

Perhaps fixed already with current master or fixed with #2530.

I've been trying Bitcoin-QT since upgrade to Ubuntu 13.04, and it has been working consistently. I get the tray icon and global menu every time I open the application.

Does Unity use the MacDocIconHandler?

I'm glad to hear the good news about 13.04. I'm planning to upgrade soon; perhaps an underlying Qt bug has been fixed upstream?

On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 2:55 AM, Jean-Pierre Rupp notifications@github.comwrote:

I've been trying Bitcoin-QT since upgrade to Ubuntu 13.04, and it has been working consistently. I get the tray icon and global menu every time I open the application.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/1242#issuecomment-17064692 .

@interfect I'm sorry AFAIK Unity / Linux doesn't use Mac stuff ^^.

I have the same problem in Ubuntu 12.10 without Unity (running a GNOME Panel/Classic desktop). The problem exists with bitcoin-qt and also litecoin-qt, but oddly enough feathercoin-qt works fine (and I haven't tried any other altcoin clients based on bitcoin-qt's code).

edit: I only mention the other two clients because they're both based on bitcoin-qt and one shows this same problem (on my machine) while the other doesn't. Now that I think about it, I remember installing bitcoin-qt and litecoin-qt as precompiled binaries (bitcon-qt from the PPA) while I had to compile feathercoin-qt from source. That could be the difference I'm seeing between the three clients here, I'll try recompiling bitcoin-qt from source and see what happens. :)

This issue is so strange, I'm on 12.04.02/64 Unity. When I start "bitcoin-qt" there is no menu or systray, But when I start "bitcoin-qt -testnet" there is both menu and systray. Weird.

I confirm that on Ubuntu 13.04 even though appindicator and global menu doesnt work, the HUD works if you press ALT, and if you exit through hud and rerun the app, it starts much faster and the problem dissapears. The appindicator and global menu show up and everything is ok.

@themighty1 Can you try with #2672? What Qt version is Bitcoin-Qt using?

@Diapolo. Using latest stable bitcoin-qt, with Qt 4.8.1 Sorry, I cant apply the patch. I switched to gnome since my last post and have not looked back.

Issue still exists. Was using all newest bitcoin-qt versions and Ubuntu 12.10, 13.04, 13.10 It reproduces if you set bitcoin-qt to run on system reboot (startup applications). Icon is absent but processes bitcoin-qt are running and consuming memory and CPU. Killing the process and relaunching bitcoin-qt gets things to normal

I notice that the ppcoin-qt project has this problem cleared up, yet it appears to be a similar code-base. Litecoin-qt doesn't, though.

Can we get their patch merged back? What did they do?

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 4:56 PM, dooglio notifications@github.com wrote:

I notice that the ppcoin-qt project has this problem cleared up, yet it appears to be a similar code-base. Litecoin-qt doesn't, though.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/1242#issuecomment-30800203 .

No matter which fork. If wallet is small, there is no issue. When it grows to 400KB issue is reproducing sometimes. If wallet.dat is 1MB or more - reproduces always

Thank for posting that observation @br0x, that's the first that may give some hope to reproduce this issue.

I had this problem as well today, no global menu...

edit: damn, but I can't reproduce it, not even by putting sleeps() in the wallet verification nd handling; it only happened once

One guess is that the GUI is unresponsive to events while starting up. Initialization blocks the GUI thread. Maybe that causes some kind of menu registration to time out. In that case the solution would be to run AppInit2 in a thread instead.

For the people that can reproduce this: does providing the -nosplash option help?

Please help testing #3493. If my gut feeling is right that they're caused by timeouts, it solves the menu and icon issues.

@laanwj I was unable to test it - seems to be unavailable on github

Must be a temporary fluke with github, that sometimes happens, try again later.

@laanwj Yes it works! Icon appears immediately and become responsive in a minute. Quite a workaround for me!

Thanks for testing @br0x

Closing by #3493

This problem is back in the last version