Panel icon misleads in certain circumstances.

[LinuxOnTheDesktop]

The panel icon for Mintreport, containing an exclamation mark as it does, suggests that there is a problem. Yet, that same icon is shown even when the Mintreport window declares that there are no problems. That is not ideal.

Mintreport 1.1.3, on Mint 19.3.

[LinuxOnTheDesktop]

The panel icon to which I refer above is the icon that appears in the Grouped Window List (GWL). But there is more and indeed, I think, worse.

To wit: just now a big yellow exclamation mark appeared on my panel (but not within GWL); when I clicked it, nothing happened for a few seconds (despite my PC being fast); then the report window appeared; after a while, that window declared that there was no problem.

It seems to me that such an icon - the big yellow exclamation mark, which has a strong connotation of a problem - should not appear when there is no problem (or when it is being determined whether or not there is a problem). Indeed, perhaps no icon at all should be shown until and unless a problem is identified. Also, the aforementioned delay between showing the icon and anything appearing to happen throws the user; at the least a busy pointer or something similar should be shown.

[alextpedro]

I've had this issue where the icon appears but there is no issue. However, when mousing over the icon, it tells me to add the xapp status applet to the panel, which IS there (or else I wouldn't be seeing the icon). It seems that it detects this "issue" but when clicked it re-reads things and marks it as resolved, thus making it seem like the icon appeared for no reason.

[ewangi]

Same here (Mint 19.3 MATE). That's three times today that the exclamation mark has appeared and when clicking on it, the message in the resulting opened window is that the system is ok.

After reading alextpedro's comment above, I moused over the icon the last time it did this and it mentioned that I needed to add the xapp status applet to the panel. This has already been done - it was done the day I updated to Mint 19.3.

[mfreeman72]

It does this on my system at boot time, if I have much of anything beyond default in the Startup Applications. Anything that was added beyond the default software seems to trigger some type of race condition. It appears (to my untrained assumptions) that the loading of additional applications delays the loading of XappStatusIcon, and once System Reports is loaded in and sees XappStatusIcon isn't there, it instantly signals that there's a problem. The only way to prevent it is to put a run delay on anything that's added, which is doable, but is extra work for the user and would confuse a newbie. The ideal situation might be to have the the System Reports delay its system scan until everything is loaded in.

[JosephMcc]

Are any of you still having the issue with it saying "the xapp status applet needs to be added"? Or do any of you have the status icon showing there is a problem when there are none?

[mfreeman72]

I just disabled it, and that solved the problem for me. It's more of an annoyance than a help. I'm not entirely sure what the point of it is. The only thing it's ever really done is to tell me to install languages I don't speak, and give me an urgent alert that I don't have any problems.

[morciej]

As an example, I was getting this same issue ("Some system reports require your attention" but no report and no core dump) after I upgraded to Mint 21 (or 21.1). The issue was resolved when I went to "Software Sources" and cleared up everything there (old PPAs, residual config etc.) Try and see if this is what causes the spurious activation of the icon.

EDIT next morning, icon still shows on 2nd startup. Report empty.

I think mintreport has no business activating Reports window, if it can't come up with a somewhat helpful explanation of the reason to bother the user. I don't need hand-holding, but tell me where to look, at least. UI 101 no?

[clefebvre]

OK there's obviously a bug we need to fix here. What tooltip do you get?

[morciej]

Sorry I didn't get back here. I decided to deactivate it from Autostart. I checked now and it showed once, but now it's quiet. I'll let it run for now.

It does seem to be related to those race conditions that occur when startup applications need services that other ones (that did not start yet) provide. But mintreports seems to latch the icon on once it does "discover" the race condition.

I do see in /etc/xdg/autostart/mintreport.desktop that there are these two lines at the end:

X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=40
X-MATE-Autostart-Delay=40

Since I run XFCE, they are not active. I think we should change the command to /bin/bash -c "sleep 40 && mintreport-tray" and see if that "cures" it.

Edit 2023-02-19 All is quiet so far...