Ubuntu GNOME Flashback

gnome-flashback (compiz) missing notifications

Bug #1639602 reported by Donjan Rodic on 2016-11-06

This bug affects 2 people

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	Ubuntu GNOME Flashback	New	Undecided	Unassigned

Bug Description

System: Ubuntu 16.10 fresh install, up-to-date packages, nvidia proprietary driver
Session: gnome-flashback (compiz), also holds for (metacity)

Volume up/down and brightness keys don't trigger notifications, so the visual information on what the current levels are is missing.
Running

notify-send test

shows a black text on white opaque background closeable notification in the top right corner.
The package notification-daemon (apparently used in flashback sessions on previous Ubuntu releases) is NOT installed.

Opening a terminal and running

export $(dbus-launch)
notify-send test

yields Ubuntu's expected white text on black transparent background notification. This only works for notifications from this terminal though.

Adding the export line to Startup Applications or ~/.profile doesn't help.
Running (after rebooting, without the export)

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/notify-osd

yields

** (notify-osd:8511): WARNING **: Another instance has already registered org.freedesktop.Notifications

** (notify-osd:8511): WARNING **: Could not register instance

and running

dbus-launch /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/notify-osd

just hangs.
What can I do to launch notify-osd or have dbus-launch correctly starting up?

Volume/brightness notifications used to work in 16.04 for the flashback sessions, showing the Ubuntu white-on-transparent-black (dark grey) bubbles.

Revision history for this message

Dmitry Shachnev (mitya57) wrote on 2016-11-06:

Hi,

Please try to remove notify-osd and run this command:

$ gsettings get org.gnome.gnome-flashback notifications

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Donjan Rodic (bryonak) wrote on 2016-11-06:

~$ gsettings get org.gnome.gnome-flashback notifications
true
~$ sudo apt purge notify-osd
[...]
~$ gsettings get org.gnome.gnome-flashback notifications
true

After logging out and back in, still yields 'true', and

notify-send foo

gives the black-text-white-bg bubble as before, but after

export $(dbus-launch)
notify-send foo

nothing at all happens from that terminal.

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Alberts Muktupāvels (muktupavels) wrote on 2016-11-06:

You probably want this:
gsettings set org.gnome.gnome-flashback notifications false
sudo apt-get install notify-osd
restart session

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Dmitry Shachnev (mitya57) wrote on 2016-11-07:

Oh sorry, I read the original description incorrectly. Alberts is right.

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Donjan Rodic (bryonak) wrote on 2016-11-07:

Thanks, that solves it for the gnome-flashback (compiz) session (haven't checked for metacity). Now displaying the same notifications as in Unity.

I guess that's what most users probably want... but it's up to you guys to decide whether setting the key to false by default is right (i.e. bug status).

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yoyoma2 (sinbad-4273) wrote on 2019-05-23:

Using only flashback compiz in description below...

I'm experiencing this bug on 16.04.6 LTS which was upgraded from 14.04 LTS. The problem doesn't occur on another 16.04.6 LTS system which was directly installed (not upgraded). The non-upgraded 16.04 LTS starts notify-osd and the upgraded one starts notification-daemon. In a startup application script on the upgraded system, the following (hack) commands fixes the notifications.

killall notification-daemon
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/notify-osd &

How can I cleanly start notify-osd instead of notification-daemon on the upgraded 16.04?

Note that the gsettings key "notifications" does exist in "org.gnome.gnome-flashback" on either system.

Also the file "/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.Notifications.service" is identical on both systems and should start notify-osd.

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yoyoma2 (sinbad-4273) wrote on 2019-05-23:

Typo above: Note that the gsettings key "notifications" does NOT exist in "org.gnome.gnome-flashback" on either system.

Revision history for this message

yoyoma2 (sinbad-4273) wrote on 2019-05-27:

Instead of the hack in comment #6, removing notification-daemon resulted in gnome running notify-osd automatically without any hack. The second line (optional) removes the config files so notification-daemon is completely gone.

sudo apt-get remove notification-daemon
sudo dpkg --purge notification-daemon

The non-upgraded ubuntu 16 system didn't have notification-daemon installed at all. Perhaps the ubuntu 16 LTS installer/upgrader should have removed notification-daemon itself rather than leaving notifications broken.

This solution was taken from the comments in the answer to this old ubuntu 12 question.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/142604/notification-daemon-configuration-trouble