Since I’ve been using Natty Narwhal a.k.a. Ubuntu 11.04, I’ve increasingly run into a scenario where the Network Manager applet crashes. Now, any old app crashing on Ubuntu doesn’t catch my attention quite like nm-applet‘s does because the crashing of nm-applet TAKES THE INTERNET WITH IT!
It’s maddening because I’m typically crash-surfing 10 sites at once and all ten of them suddenly have those “server” errors. Before, I cottoned on the the fact that nm-applet was having a crappy day, I would do the troubleshooting dance of making sure whatever proxy I was using didn’t time out on me or that Firefox hasn’t automagically started surfing in “Offline mode”.
Once I noticed that my Ubuntu wireless notification icon was gone, restarting is was as easy as:
- Firing up terminal. Do this by hitting the Windows/Super key and start to type “term”;
- Enter the words, “nm-applet” and it should bring back the notification icon. The only pitfall with this approach is that closing the terminal ends the nm-applet process you started from that terminal. My advice is to consign that particular terminal to your 4th workspace to avoid accidentally closing it.
jane@Jumanji:~$ nm-applet ** (nm-applet:4258): DEBUG: old state indicates that this was not a disconnect ** (nm-applet:4258): DEBUG: foo_client_state_changed_cb ** (nm-applet:4258): DEBUG: foo_client_state_changed_cb
- By starting up nm-applet through the terminal, one persistent message I’ve been getting is:
** Message: Caught signal 15, shutting down... ** (nm-applet:13167): WARNING **: _nm_object_get_property: Error getting 'WpaFlags' for /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/AccessPoint/194: (19) Method "Get" with signature "ss" on interface "org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" doesn't exist
In conclusion, as of 05/24/2011, nm-applet on Ubuntu 11.04 is pretty crashy, get in the habit of Ctrl-C-ing whatever post/email you’re handcrafting so you don’t lose any work. Cheers and see the associated images: