WIreless and battrey icon missing

[gerryex]

Hi ALL,

I am very new to Ubuntu but am familier with OS's in general. I loaded the latest version (9.10, I believe) onto an Acer laptop and its been wroking fine. Just today I had to change out my router to the standard one used by Verizon FiOS, which includes wireless. After some stumbles got everything to work pertty well, but then I had a problem.

When I booted up in the panel at the top, which used to show an icon for the battery and for the wireless connection now showed two icons for the speaker level next to the wireless icon. One of the speaker icons worked as expected but the other one didn't do anything. So I right clicked on it and deleted it and it went away along with the wireless icon. Now I can't seem to get either one back.

I did go into the power management app in the main menu and did specify that the icon show all the time but that didn't help. I also right clicked on the panel and looked at the available things to add but neither the battery nor the wireless icons were listed.

The other thing is where can you go to make changes to the wireless setup if the icon is missing. Shouldn't there be some other way to get to the wireless setup?

Anyway, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Gerry

[NightwishFan]

Press alt+f2 and type:

killall gnome-panel

Is your panel still incorrect? If so, open a Terminal under Application -> Accessories and type:

killall nm-applet && nm-applet

Did the network applet show up? Please print any error messages in the terminal.

[gerryex]

Press alt+f2 and type:

killall gnome-panel

Is your panel still incorrect? If so, open a Terminal under Application -> Accessories and type:

killall nm-applet && nm-applet

Did the network applet show up? Please print any error messages in the terminal.

Hi NightwishFan,

Thanks for the suggestion, but isn't "killall" going to remove the panel? I don't want to do something that I won't be able to get back to.

Thanks,
Gerry

[NightwishFan]

It should restart automatically. If you are unsure, then use:

killall gnome-panel && gnome-panel

[migi]

You might have removed the notification area when you tried to remove the speaker. Try right clicking the gnome-panel/add to panel/Notification area. That might at least bring back the missing icons again, but might not solve the problem with two speaker icons.

[gerryex]

It should restart automatically. If you are unsure, then use:

killall gnome-panel && gnome-panel

Hi NightwishFan,

Yes, you were right, the panel restarted almost instantly. Unfortunately the network and battery icons were still not there.

If I remember my old Unix the "&&" tells the shell to execute the stuff following it as a new command, so I assume that should restart the applet, but all I got were a bunch of messages and the command does not seem to finish. Here are some of the messages:

** (nm-apples:4397): DEBUG: foo_client_state_changed_cb
... DEBUG: old state indicates that this was not a disconnect 9
... DEBUG: going for offline with icon: notification-network-wireless-disconnected


I got several of these messages but the comman promt never comes back. When I go to close the terminal it tells me that the command has not finished but it let it sit for several minutes and it still has not finished! So I just closed it.

So for now I still don't have the battery nor wireless icon. Is there some way I can get to the wireless setup without the icon. Also if there is anything else you can suggest I would appreciate it!

Thanks,
Gerry

[NightwishFan]

The app running in the terminal will not close, as it is a GUI app. That was the correct behavior. Perhaps you have some packages missing (though I doubt it, try this in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop && sudo apt-get -f install

After this command runs, log out and then back in.

[gerryex]

You might have removed the notification area when you tried to remove the speaker. Try right clicking the gnome-panel/add to panel/Notification area. That might at least bring back the missing icons again, but might not solve the problem with two speaker icons.

Hi migi,

Yes! That got me back the battery and speaker icon, but I still don't have the wireless icon. And without that the system keeps trying to tie into my neighbor's wireless rather than my own and I know when the wireless icon was there before I was able to tell it to tie into my wireless and it worked. So without the wireless icon I can't seem to tie into my own wireless network.

Thanks,
Gerry

[gerryex]

The app running in the terminal will not close, as it is a GUI app. That was the correct behavior. Perhaps you have some packages missing (though I doubt it, try this in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop && sudo apt-get -f install

After this command runs, log out and then back in.

Hi NightwishFan,

That looks rather intimidating!!! Before I try that I just want to say that the wireless icon WAS there and functioning properly so what ever software needed was there. All I did was right click on it and remove it. If you still think I should try it I'll do that first thing tomorrow as I have to shut down now.

(Is there some thing simpler I could try?) Also, is there some other way to get to the wirless setup so I can tie into the proper network.

Thanks for all your help,
Gerry

[migi]

I'm not sure but it could be that you killed the network-applet while executing killall before. You could try to just write nm-applet& in the console. But then it will disappear again if you close the console window. Luckily if that is the case a simple logout and login should autostart the applet for you again.