Bitcoin Forum

Just upgraded the client to 0.6.2 and the icon is no longer in the system tray (notification area?) when bitcoin is running.  It is also absent from the menu bar.  Hmmmm.  I guess I could choose to never minimize it but that doesn't seem practical.

Anyone?

Log out, select "gnome" as your DE, log in.

Well, TBH, i havent tried 6.2 on gnome shell yet, but even if it doesnt work, its a whole lot better than unity :)

The interaction with the menu bar is different in 0.6 (never shows as a running app), but the icon in the notification area (tray) works fine on my 11.04 so maybe there is something different with 12.04.

I did change the option "Minimize on close" (enabled it) so that I am not accidentally shutting down the program.  Does that cause the notification icon to appear perhaps?

I can't access the menu, so changing options is out.  :(

Unity uses a global menu, much like OS-X. So your menu is (usually) not in the application window, its in the taskbar. When bitcoin has focus, Move your mouse to the upper edge of the screen, thats where it should appear. Sorry if you know all that already, but its a common cause for confusion.

Edit: just tried 0.6.2 on ubuntu 12.04 using unity (yuck), it seems to work fine

The menu was available (at the top of the screen) when I was using the old version of bitcoin with 11.10, and the old version of bitcoin with 12.04, but the new version of bitcoin with 12.04 will not show a menu there at all.  It pretty much makes bitcoin useless.  I guess I either have to revert to the last bitcoin version to change my Ubuntu back to 11.10. 

Any chance there will be a fix for this soon?  Or is Ubuntu compatibility pretty low on the priority list?

I thought this was a bug and had similar symptoms. Then I remembered the new HUD menu in Ubuntu! Press Alt and then type file or whatever menu you would be looking for.
Hope that helps. It's all very futuristic; they kind of sprung it on us, I agree.

Hey Kiko that is a valuable bit of information; thank you!  Now can you tell me what I would type in the HUD to get the bitcoin client to appear?

I believe they are two separate menu systems. Press the super/windows key to launch apps or bring them to the forefront. When using an app, press alt to get the HUD menu that replaces traditional point and click menu for things like file->save etc.

The HUD menu is very new and may not work with all programs.

More good info!  Unfortunately that doesn't give me access to bitcoin though.  :(

OK; if you downloaded the program from sourceforge or somewhere we are going to have to get our hands a little dirty. Let's begin.

Put the following lines in a new text file on your desktop and name it Bitcoin.desktop (only the .desktop part of the file is important).


Note the line Exec=... This should be the full path to wherever you downloaded the package. (Pro-tip if you move it to /usr/local/bin then you can run it from any terminal)

Make the file executable by right-click -> properties (or use from the command line)

This should give you an old fashioned desktop shortcut to the bitcoin client. When the client is running you can right click the icon on the launcher menu and select 'Lock to Launcher'. This will mean it is a permanent button on the menu.

Hope that works for you.

Edit: One more finishing touch...
Right click the desktop shortcut.
Click the icon button on the left of the basic tab, navigate to the downloaded package and choose /bitcoin-0.6.2-linux/src/share/pixmaps/bitcoin80.xpm.
Now you have a shiny logo for the program, but you might need to unlock and relock it to the launcher to make the logo show up there too.

... why is any of that necessary?
If you just install the bitcoin-qt client from the stable channel, it works fine, with launcher and everything. No problems with unity either on my laptop.

(or use ubuntu software center to do the same through a GUI)

The problem is not the launcher... There are no menus(Bitcoin menus) and no tray Icon. The tray icon appears when you launch a second instance and it crashes because bitcoin is already running.

I have the same problem. To make it worse I had the minimize to tray on close, so if by accident I minimize it, I can't get the bitcoin window back. I also can't access the options to change that behaviour. Also, if I want to really close Bitcoin-qt I have to use htop and terminate the process.

To OP: Don't you get mad when you say one thing and everybody else responds about some other thing? ;)
I told Gavin about this problem on the 0.6.2 thread.

FWIW, no such problem here with ubuntu 12.04 and bitcoin-qt 0.6.2 from the stable channel. Menu's work, tray icon works.

Strange. Doesn't work here. Same problem as OP, since day 1. Stable channel also. Only beta stuff I have here is Armory and Firefox. And now that I talk about it Armory tray icon also not there anymore, but at least has the menus lol

As an aside; I noticed I only get the tray icon when launching via my shortcut. If I run bitcoin-qt from a terminal, no tray-icon.

+1, and thank God now I don't feel like I am losing my mind.  Yeah, basically the only way for me to access bitcoin is to shut the computer down.  When I restart, I can go to bitcoin qt and start it.  Then it is there for me.  But as soon as I minimize the window it is GONE.  Like, totally gone.  It isn't shut down- I know this because if I go to the bitcoin qt icon and double-click again it tells me it is already running.  I just have no way to get to it.

As a Linux n00b, this is baffling to me. 

You can use System monitor or kill command to stop it from the command line. I use htop, but I figure you don't have it installed ;)

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/stop-process-ubuntu-linux-command/

What if I don't want to kill it but I just want to see it- or get a new receiving address?

You stop it and you start it again, maybe?
At least you don't have to reboot, like you said you were doing.
This is not a solution, just a workaround.
Or in alternative, do what I do, leave the window always open in it's own Workspace.
I'm sure it will be solved sooner or later. For now we have to live with it, I guess

Are you guys starting bitcoin automatically on startup?

Not me.
Lucky for me I didn't check that box on the Options or else I would be stuck with it, just like I'm stuck with the Minimize to tray on close lol

I'm not either.

restore program focus
terminal:> wmctrl -a bitcoin

Darn!  I was so hopeful when I saw this.  But no, it doesn't work at all.  Nothing happens.

tiptopgem, do you by any chance have Bitcoin pinned on the Laucher?
As soon as I unpinned mine from the sidebar launcher I got the menus back. Now at least I could change the options to close it instead of minimizing to tray lol

EDIT: Fixed it.
As soon as I unpinned it the icon never again showed up on the launcher sidebar. Here's what I did to fix all of the problems.
Open dash, type Bitcoin. Get your mouser over the Bitcoin icon and drag it to your desktop, it will create an icon/shortcut on the desktop. You can drag that shortcut to the launcher sidebar if you wish and voilá, whenever you use it, be it on the desktop or on the sidebar launcher, you will have the menus and system tray icon back ;)

For some strange reason, when I added the desktop shortcut to the sidebar launcher, it remained there but it didn't had the little arrow that open apps have. After a couple restarts I managed to drag the Bitcoin shortcut from the dash to the launcher sidebar and now it works as intended, menus and tray icon included, having the arrow on the side od the icon when the client is open.

Some odd shit, I'll tell you that lol

Am I the only one still have problems with this?  Tried everything you said psy.. no luck.  I noticed the when I open 2 instances of the client I get the "bitcoin is probably already runing" error and I get the tray icon back but when I hit ok.. poof its gone again lol.

NOTE: As I was typing this post I opened it again and BAM! I got the tray icon back.. seems to be working everytime I open again.. definitely "Some odd shit"

And... now its gone again.  Guess I'll just stick with the command line until this is resolved.

The only way I found it to be working 100% of the time is to launch Bitcoin-qt using the shortcut on the desktop.
Shortcuts on the launcher always go on and off as they please.

I got the shortcut on the desktop but it seems to decide by itself when it wants to show me its tray icon.. what a tease.  Gotta cross my fingers everytime I run it.

I have the same issue of no file menu and no tray icon, I installed via the repo ppa:bitcoin/bitcoin.
I'm considering removing bitcoin-qt and installing it again but I'm worried I won't backup my wallet and chain data files correctly.

oh forgot to post an update here.. if you compile from source everything is fine.

For people who don't want to compile from source, here's the solution:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=187302.0

I don't know if this will help, but this is what I did with Ubuntu 12.04LTS and older version of Bitcoin-QT (not sure version but < 0.8.1)


I hate Unity too!  ;)

You're welcome to donate to 1LUF4Jp8PprpHcQVwXyLjCrdbSjFuaycUs if this helped you avoid pulling your hair out in anger. Thanks.

Then give elementary OS a try. its based on ubuntu, runs all ubuntu apps but has the best UI Ive come across so far.
oh and no problems with bitcoin-qt