MinimWatch - no tray icon(s) or desktop launcher

[simoncn]

I have found the cause of this problem. It is caused by a deliberate change in GNOME 3.26 to disable tray icons. You can work around it by installing the Topicons Plus shell extension together with MinimServer update 105. You also need to be running Java 9.

[nickc]

I've just returned to this issue after a long absence and found your latest post, for which many thanks. Not much luck so far though as I can't activate the TopIcons Plus shell extension. I have the latest Gnome-shell installed, I've got the Gnome shell integration addon in Firefox, but when I go to the TopIcons Plus Gnome extension page I get a pop-up message: "no-gnome-shell". See here:
https://github.com/nE0sIghT/chrome-gnome.../issues/57
Though this bug was in an earlier version and I have v9:

Code:

chrome-gnome-shell is already the newest version (9-0ubuntu1~ubuntu16.04.3).

So I'm a bit flummoxed and getting out of my comfort zone!

Reading back over this thread and your PMs I'm also getting confused about java. We seem to start off talking about getting MinimWatch to function properly on my desktop, versions of java being possibly the issue, so I've been assuming it's the java on my desktop that needs changing. But you refer to a newer version of MinimServer and java 9, so is it MinimServer on the NAS that's causing MinimWatch on the desktop to not function? I've got the 32bit Java 9 (many thanks) on my Ubuntu 16.04 desktop now, but reviewing your guidance, I'm wondering if it should be on the two NASs running MinimServer, as you tell me to add a file minimstart.conf to the minimserver folder telling it which java to use. But I only have a MinimWatch folder on my desktop, not a MinimServer one. I've tried adding the /etc/minimstart.conf file to the minimwatch folder, but no joy so far.

Forgive me if this all seems very confused - I am at the moment!

[simoncn]

I apologise for my confusing reference to MinimServer update 105 in my previous post. On reviewing this thread, I see that your issue concerned MinimWatch running on a GNOME desktop. Given this, you don't need to change anything in your MinimServer configuration but you do need to install the latest MinimWatch update (update 54).

The error message about "unable to create tray icon" is caused by an incompatibility between the latest GNOME 3.26 and Java. This is because of a decision by the GNOME developers to remove functionality that was available in previous versions of GNOME and is vital for Java to function correctly. The only solution I have found for this problem is to install TopIcons Plus on the GNOME desktop.

In addition to this problem, there are other issues with Java and GNOME (not just the latest version of GNOME) not working together correctly. In my opinion, these issues are caused by Java and should be fixed in Java. However, it will probably be a long time before this happens, so I have added a workaround to MinimWatch and MinimServer that allows them to work on GNOME without the Java fix. This is intended to be a temporary workaround until there is a Java fix available.

The workaround requires the GNOME machine to have Java 9 and MinimWatch update 53 (or later) or MinimServer update 105 (or later). If MinimWatch is running on the GNOME machine and MinimServer is running on some other machine, it doesn't matter what versions of Java and MinimServer are installed on the other machine.

[nickc]

(22-11-2017 17:48)simoncn Wrote:  I apologise for my confusing reference to MinimServer update 105 in my previous post. On reviewing this thread, I see that your issue concerned MinimWatch running on a GNOME desktop. Given this, you don't need to change anything in your MinimServer configuration but you do need to install the latest MinimWatch update (update 54).

The error message about "unable to create tray icon" is caused by an incompatibility between the latest GNOME 3.26 and Java. This is because of a decision by the GNOME developers to remove functionality that was available in previous versions of GNOME and is vital for Java to function correctly. The only solution I have found for this problem is to install TopIcons Plus on the GNOME desktop.

In addition to this problem, there are other issues with Java and GNOME (not just the latest version of GNOME) not working together correctly. In my opinion, these issues are caused by Java and should be fixed in Java. However, it will probably be a long time before this happens, so I have added a workaround to MinimWatch and MinimServer that allows them to work on GNOME without the Java fix. This is intended to be a temporary workaround until there is a Java fix available.

The workaround requires the GNOME machine to have Java 9 and MinimWatch update 53 (or later) or MinimServer update 105 (or later). If MinimWatch is running on the GNOME machine and MinimServer is running on some other machine, it doesn't matter what versions of Java and MinimServer are installed on the other machine.

Thanks very much for this further clarification - what a nightmare though for you as a developer!

Although I now have java 9 on my desktop, I don't think I've yet done anything to ensure it's the version that gets used, so presumably I follow the instructions you provide on the installation page to set the path. That should be manageable.
But given that I ran minimwatch/setup probably without the java 9 version path set, can I just run it again, or do I need to uninstall and reinstall mimimwatch?

Finally, one of the many features of MinimServer /MinimWatch I've greatly appreciated and admired is the effortless way the updates are managed. But in the absence of a functioning MinimWatch, how do I ascertain which updates might be available and how do I implement them manually? (As you say I must have update 53 or later.)

[simoncn]

No need to reinstall MinimWatch or rerun setup if you change to a different version of Java. Just edit the minimstart.conf file, then stop and restart MinimWatch.

You can check the version of Java in use by looking at the start of the minimwatch.log file. This will also tell you which MinimWatch update level is installed.

You are right about the nightmare. Meet me for a beer some time and I will tell you more....

[nickc]

(22-11-2017 23:09)simoncn Wrote:  No need to reinstall MinimWatch or rerun setup if you change to a different version of Java. Just edit the minimstart.conf file, then stop and restart MinimWatch.

You can check the version of Java in use by looking at the start of the minimwatch.log file. This will also tell you which MinimWatch update level is installed.

You are right about the nightmare. Meet me for a beer some time and I will tell you more....

I sense I'm almost there but not quite!
Minimwatch seems to find java 9 now, but is denied permission. I've tried changing the permissions (not something I do very often so may be erroneous) but to no avail:

Code:

nick@nick-build-1:~/Programmes$ minimwatch/bin/startc
minimwatch/bin/startc: 41: minimwatch/bin/startc: /usr/lib/jvm/jre-9: Permission denied
nick@nick-build-1:~/Programmes$ sudo chmod -R ugo+rwx /usr/lib/jvm/jre-9
nick@nick-build-1:~/Programmes$ minimwatch/bin/startc
minimwatch/bin/startc: 41: minimwatch/bin/startc: /usr/lib/jvm/jre-9: Permission denied

Then

Code:

nick@nick-build-1:~/Programmes$ ls -l /usr/lib/jvm/jre-9
total 24
drwxrwxrwx  2 nick nick 4096 Nov 22 11:51 bin
drwxrwxrwx  4 nick nick 4096 Nov 22 11:51 conf
drwxrwxrwx 74 nick nick 4096 Nov 22 11:51 legal
drwxrwxrwx 11 nick nick 4096 Nov 22 11:51 lib
-rwxrwxrwx  1 nick nick  158 Aug  3 06:26 README.html
-rwxrwxrwx  1 nick nick 1566 Aug  3 06:26 release
nick@nick-build-1:~/Programmes$

if I understand it properly, would seem to indicate permissions have been changed.
I'm hoping this is just my ignorance and inexperience and you'll spot straight away what needs doing.

So far as a logfile with update level and java version number is concerned, I can only find two text files within the minimwatch folder.
There's minimwatch/minimwatch-0.8.4/lib/minimwatch-0.8.4.jmpkg, which has:

Quote:.name = MinimWatch
.version = 0.8.4
.copyright = Copyright © 2012-2016 Simon Nash. All rights reserved.
.update = minimwatch-0.8.4.jmupd
.modules = minimwatch-0.8.203.jar, minimui-0.8.212.jar, jminim-0.6.217.jar, ohnet()-1.6.1919.zip, minimscript$-0.8.201.jar
.conflict = {le}minimwatch-0.8-update-39

and minimwatch/data/minimwatch-out.log, which has a single line which hasn't changed or been added to as I've made further attempts to get minimwatch started:

Quote:/home/nick/Programmes/minimwatch/bin/startd: 184: exec: java: not found

It does at least confirm that hooking up to java is the thing that needs to happen.

[simoncn]

There might be a problem with your minimstart.conf file. It should say:

java = /usr/lib/jvm/jre-9/bin/java

[nickc]

(23-11-2017 19:35)simoncn Wrote:  There might be a problem with your minimstart.conf file. It should say:

java = /usr/lib/jvm/jre-9/bin/java

Aha! Yes, I had the full path originally - before sorting the right java - then after reading something I removed the vital /bin/java, thinking it was the folder it needed to point to.

So definite progress, as I now get different error messages!

In the continued absence of the much lamented tray icons, I've been trying to communicate with minimwatch via the command line. I'm not clear of the different purposes of startc, startd and starti. Running startc and starti both produce the same:

Quote:MinimWatch startup error

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/openhome/net/controlpoint/ICpDeviceListListener

Nothing appears to happen when I run startd, and I'm wondering if the d is for "desktop"?

So next I re-read through your guidance on Mscript and tried running that, but all I can get from it is:

Quote:MScript error

Configuration directory not found

Another path not correctly configured, I wonder?

[simoncn]

The various 'start' commands are described in this section. 'starti' isn't mentioned because it isn't intended to be called from a command line but is invoked under the covers when you double-click the desktop launch icon. The 'd' is for daemon, 'c' is for console and 'i' is for interactive.

This NoClassDefFoundError is normally caused by having the wrong level of MinimWatch installed (0.8.4 instead of 0.8.4.7). See this page.

[nickc]

(24-11-2017 11:41)simoncn Wrote:  The various 'start' commands are described in this section. 'starti' isn't mentioned because it isn't intended to be called from a command line but is invoked under the covers when you double-click the desktop launch icon. The 'd' is for daemon, 'c' is for console and 'i' is for interactive.

This NoClassDefFoundError is normally caused by having the wrong level of MinimWatch installed (0.8.4 instead of 0.8.4.7). See this page.

Right! Thank you! I'd done a complete uninstall, then reinstall, and I'd gone from the "Download" link in section 2. of your "Installing MinimWatch on Linux" guidance, which gave me 0.8.4. I didn't realise there was more than one downloads page.

Now I have updated to 0.8.4.7 and all seems to be working properly, except for the elusive tray icons! I'm back to the "unable to create tray icon" error message. But at least I can now run MinimWatch and communicate via the command line. I tried mscript again, but still got the "Configuration directory not found" message.