All my systray indicator applets have suddenly disappeared from my classic Gnome desktop.
Because I'm "old school" (or, depending on your point of view, a fossil) I simply can't get used to the more recent Ubuntu user interfaces. It feels like I'm trying to paint my house through the keyhole. Give me a proper menu and taskbar any day! Not to mention windows that can be resized any time, and a 2x3 workspace switcher that feels like multiple desktops, and other such essentials so sanity. Let's face it, a user interface that has to rely on a search feature as the easiest way to start applications has problems.
Which is why I used the classic Gnome desktop (gnome-flashback) on Ubuntu 18.04. This, admittedly, has stability problems. Crashes after resume from suspend are the most frequent symptom. Annoying, but still I find that easier to live with than the default UI.
But this morning suddenly all my indicator applets on the right hand side of the top bar disappeared. Sound, session, power, network manager... all gone:
So now I can't even shutdown or reboot the system in a controlled manner, let alone switch networks or anything else like that.
And I'm stumped. The applicator processes themselves seem to be running:
rankvw@dellfvw:~$ ps -ef | grep indicator
frankvw 2089 1859 0 11:10 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-datetime/indicator-datetime-service
frankvw 2090 1859 0 11:10 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-keyboard/indicator-keyboard-service --use-gtk
frankvw 2091 1859 0 11:10 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-bluetooth/indicator-bluetooth-service
frankvw 2093 1859 0 11:10 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-messages/indicator-messages-service
frankvw 2094 1859 0 11:10 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-sound/indicator-sound-service
frankvw 2097 1859 0 11:10 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-printers/indicator-printers-service
frankvw 2102 1859 0 11:10 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-power/indicator-power-service
frankvw 2104 1859 0 11:10 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-application/indicator-application-service
frankvw 2108 1859 0 11:10 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-session/indicator-session-service
frankvw 2586 2112 1 11:10 ? 00:00:00 indicator-multiload
frankvw 2911 2827 0 11:10 pts/0 00:00:00 grep --color=auto indicator
But nothing shows. And I'm not sure where to go from here.
Suggestions, anyone?
UPDATE: In /var/log/syslog I find the following:
Jul 12 14:07:25 dellfvw gnome-panel.desktop[2386]: Entity: line 1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found
Jul 12 14:07:25 dellfvw gnome-panel.desktop[2386]: ºX/9<96>þìGéçk{e<8f>V<8a>ÛvîûTÿ#033Kj¦³þþ¹<9f>çëô#031#024<88>i#003@ǦäÁÔÜ#027<8f>#026WòõÊc#030¥~¹ c#024#014êÌ#006e#030 }<9a>°#023#036#011#033<89>äÈ£®
Which suggests something has been corrupted. But what, or where?