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Ubuntu 23.10 - No menu

beaniew

Ubuntu there's no menu for Dropbox, when I right click the App indicator in the top bar (see image)

› dropbox version
Dropbox daemon version: 195.4.4995
Dropbox command-line interface version: 2024.01.22

› lsb_release -a

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 23.10
Release: 23.10
Codename: mantic

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beaniew

Installing this GNOME extension solves it for me! :white_check_mark:

AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support

All comments

Walter

Hi there @beaniew - sorry to hear about this.

Have you ensured that your device meets the minimum requirements as outlined here? If this persists after rebooting your computer, could you reinstall the app and let us know how it goes?

Thanks!

beaniew

Hi Walter,

I've reinstalled and restarted as suggested, here's the error logs that comes up when running "dropbox start" :

in /home/ben/programs/ 
› dropbox start
Starting Dropbox...dropbox: load fq extension '/home/ben/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-195.4.4995/cryptography.hazmat.bindings._openssl.abi3.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/ben/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-195.4.4995/cryptography.hazmat.bindings._padding.abi3.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/ben/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-195.4.4995/apex._apex.abi3.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/ben/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-195.4.4995/psutil._psutil_linux.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/ben/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-195.4.4995/psutil._psutil_posix.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/ben/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-195.4.4995/tornado.speedups.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/ben/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-195.4.4995/wrapt._wrappers.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/ben/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-195.4.4995/PyQt5.QtCore.so'
Dropbox isn't running!
Done!
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/ben/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-195.4.4995/PyQt5.sip.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/ben/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-195.4.4995/PyQt5.QtGui.so'
dropbox: load fq extension '/home/ben/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-195.4.4995/PyQt5.QtWidgets.so'

in /home/ben/programs/ 
› dropbox: load fq extension '/home/ben/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-195.4.4995/PyQt5.QtDBus.so'

(dropbox:36124): LIBDBUSMENU-GLIB-WARNING **: 17:26:07.079: About to Show called on an item wihtout submenus.  We're ignoring it.

The software seems to work, just not the App indicator in Ubuntu 23.10.

Possibly a dependency issue here perhaps??

beaniew

Seems related to this issue here -> https://github.com/pop-os/pop/issues/2788

beaniew

Installing this GNOME extension solves it for me! :white_check_mark:

AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support

FeRDNYC

@beaniew That's very strange — without that extension, you shouldn't even have had an icon there. That extension is the thing that provides the system tray itself, for Dropbox to show up in.

I do have that extension installed, on Fedora 40, and the situation is the same as you originally reported — nothing happens when I click the icon. When I deactivate the extension, the Dropbox icon disappears entirely, as I'd expect.

FeRDNYC

HUH! But, turns out RESTARTING the extension (just switching it off and on again) did actually make Dropbox's menu accessible!

notredruide

Thanks all, this does indeed work -- but it's not a satisfactory solution because it looks like I'll have to stop and restart the extension on every boot. That may be trivial for Linux mavens but I am not one of them.

FeRDNYC

No, I agree, and I've already reported the issue to the extension maintainers.

ubuntu/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator #529: Dropbox icon won't accept clicks until appindicator extension is restarted

No response yet.

FeRDNYC

@beaniew wrote:
Seems related to this issue here -> https://github.com/pop-os/pop/issues/2788

I don't think this is actually related to that issue, because it just affects the contents of the menu, not whether it works at all.

(In other words, even after restarting the AppIndicator extension, the Dropbox menu on my system always shows "Connecting..." and is missing several additional menu items that it used to contain. That's libdbusmenu-glib4 #2788. But the fact that it doesn't come up AT ALL until the AppIndicator extension is restarted is something new/different.)

FeRDNYC

One thing that might help, @notredruide, is to make sure dropbox is started before the extension. That's how I have it set up on my system, and as a result I don't have to restart the extension every boot, only after I restart dropbox manually.

On my system I've done that by setting up a systemd service to start the daemon, in place of $HOME/.config/autostart/dropbox.desktop. That's a bit technical, but I'll provide the service file definition for anyone interested.

But if you don't want to go that route, by default $HOME/.config/autostart/dropbox.desktop contains an autostart delay:

X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=10

Deleting that line might help it start up before the extension, in which case you wouldn't need to restart anything.

For anyone who wants to have their systemd user session manage the daemon, instead of relying on autostart, you can delete the autostart file and create a dropbox.service file instead. My service definition, with dropbox installed into /usr/bin/ from the Dropbox RPM repository, is:

[Unit]
Description=Dropbox Network Storage Daemon
After=network-online.target graphical-session.target gnome-shell.service

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=%h/.dropbox/dropbox.pid
ExecStart=/usr/bin/dropbox start -i
ExecStop=/usr/bin/dropbox stop
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

FeRDNYC

@FeRDNYC wrote:
For anyone who wants to have their systemd user session manage the daemon, instead of relying on autostart, you can delete the autostart file and create a dropbox.service file instead.

Actually, instead of just deleting the autostart file, you should switch off "Start Dropbox on system startup" in the Dropbox preferences. That'll delete the autostart file for you, and won't re-create it later when it notices it's missing.

notredruide

Thank you FeRDNYC, you have gone to a lot of trouble! Unfortunately I'm not well enough versed in under-the-hood Linux to adopt that method. I can live with restarting the extension for now. But I may try commenting out that Autostart-Delay line -- that's within my (limited) competence.

netsurfer38

It does appear that one needs to have the AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support gnome extension installed for the Dropbox menu to work.

However the menu no longer works after Powering Off or doing a Restart. However other forums state that the menu is restored after locking the screen by pressing "Windows+L" or "Super+L" and then unlocking the screen again. This has worked for me.

see 2304_dropbox_icon_is_not_clickable & nautilus-dropbox/+bug/2015620

It seems that Dropbox does not play well with some gnome extensions such as Dash to Panel. However the aforementioned Lock screen trick works with Dash to Panel enabled.

Ref: https://github.com/ubuntu/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator/issues/346

I attempted to delay the autostart of Dropbox, but unfortunately that did not work for me. Some other options for delaying autostart may be found here delay-startup-application-ubuntu

FeRDNYC

Oh, one thing there — you wouldn't want to delay the autostart of dropbox, you'd actually want to ACCELERATE it. Delaying it is going in the wrong direction.

If the Dropbox daemon starts before the "AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support" extension is initialized, then there are no issues with its menu; effectively, the extension's initial startup is equivalent to restarting it after the daemon.

The menu problem only comes up when the extension is started FIRST. (As it normally will be, when Dropbox is being started by $HOME/.config/autostart/dropbox.desktop, since the Shell and its extensions get initialized well before anything starts processing autostart files.)