LXPanel random missing apps/icons

[peabee]

Also posted to the LXDE Forum....

I have 2 panels - the top one just has an "Application Launch Bar" with 12 apps in it.....

Most times the panel starts up with some apps/icons missing - seemingly randomly but the bigger apps (e.g. Chromium & Thunderbird) are the most likely to be missing.

I have to do repeated calls to:
lxpanelctl restart
and eventually all apps/icons appear.

Questions:

1. Anybody know what causes this behaviour?
2. What checks is LXPanel running to decide that an icon cannot be displayed?
3. Is there a record of which icons opened successfully and which could not be opened?
4. Is there a test I can do to ensure that all apps are ready to be displayed?

Many thanks

[JustinS-B]

I also have this exact problem, with identical symptoms.

I have two panels. My second one just has an Application Launch Bar with three applications in it.

I run LXDE on Arch Linux, booted from an SSD on an Intel i7 based system with 32Gb of RAM. The installation of Arch & LXDE is only a few days old, & everything is fully updated.

Every time that I boot up my system, I only get one or two of my app icons appearing. Just as @peabee noted above, repeatedly running lxpanelctl restart from a terminal will give me one, two or three icons, in a different order, until at last I get my three icons back. This usually takes between three and five reloads to accomplish.

[edwardp3]

Is this the same issue?

[peabee]

No - that looks like a different issue......

[matthiashoster]

It has been some years since @peabee's original post, but I still have the same issue...

I also use two panels. And the bottom panel should look like this:

While it almost always looks more like that:

The number and position of the missing desktop files changes randomly - here it affects the first ones, but that is not always the case.

As peabee described, restarting lxpanel over and over again makes the panel fully appear at some random point of time...

[peabee]

Thanks @matthiashoster
I doubt this is ever going to be fixed.......
The forum post has been locked........
Here is a video (from 2022) - watch the top panel as a number of
lxpanelctl restart
are done

lxpanel-290522.mp4 1.3MB

[ib]

Can anyone of you patch lxpanel and libfm, compile and run tests to help track this down?

[peabee]

@ib I can if compile instructions are provided.

[ib]

@peabee What is your distribution?

[peabee]

I use a version of Puppy Linux based on Slackware Current with LXDE called LxPupSc64.

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=167

[ib]

@peabee I'm afraid I'm not familiar with Puppy Linux. I can't tell you how to compile and replace lxpanel and libfm there.

[peabee]

On 2nd thoughts I'm probably not best positioned to do investigations as I'm running a GTK2 build of lxpanel-0.10.1 from:
http://ponce.cc/slackware/slackware64-15.0/lxde/

I prefer this to the GTK3 builds where the systray does not play well with popup notifications as you hover over tray items - the systray background is permanently overwritten by the notification.

Perhaps @matthiashoster or @JustinS-B are running GTK3 versions?

[matthiashoster]

@peabee, @ib: Sorry, I doubt I will be much of a help here. I am running Ubuntu 24.04, but on an Android Phone with UserLAnd installed, and LXDE pre-installed (no idea which version, though).

While this somehow limits my options, I have found a workaround, which up to now works fine (but I have no idea whether it will stay that way):

Rather than adding one "Application Launch Bar" with all my favorite apps to the bottom panel, I add two of them. The first only contains one app (in my case PCmanFM). The second contains all the others. Looks identical to just having one. But for some mysterious reason, it now loads all desktop files, always (knock on wood).

Not an actual solution, but currently good enough for me...