Right-click menus in system tray not working.

Hello everyone,

When I right-click on any of the items in my system tray, the menus that appear do not work - they appear all right, but nothing happens when I click on any of the items. I only noticed this last night while trying to install RSIBreak, and can't say how long it's been going on since I don't often have cause to use those menus, but I think it's probably a recent phenomenon - I definitely have used those menus in the past. Anyone know what might be causing it or how to fix it or get around it? RSIBreak isn't really usable unless I can use those menus, and neither are the other programs I tried as alternatives, and I could really do with having it.

I'm using Zorin 9 Core. There are good reasons why I can't upgrade right now, until some health issues I'm having improve.

Hi wombat140

as I do not run Zorin 9 core my first step would be to uninstall RSIBreak and restart your laptop/pc.

there must be an alternative for the program you intended to install

kindly advise outcome

cheers

There are alternatives, yes - but they all require the use of the menus on their System Tray icons to work properly, the same as RSIBreak does! Unless anyone here knows of a break-timer program that can be operated without using that?

No - I've now tried uninstalling RSIBreak, and even restoring from my Timeshift backup, but I'm afraid it didn't work. Also, after that, installed the latest lot of updates which I hadn't got around to, in case it was a bug and they'd fixed it again by now. No luck. So I'm thinking it is Ubuntu (or Zorin, but I don't remember seeing any updates that said "Zorin" lately, only "Ubuntu base") and they have broken something. Is there anywhere you can file bug reports?

Thanks very much for the reply.

Hi wombat140

I would try (again) to remove it under Terminal (CTRL+ALT+T)

Code:

sudo apt-get remove --auto-remove rsibreak

Code:

sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove rsibreak

restart your pc/laptop again
check if right click menu is working again
consider to re-install RSBREAK

Code:

sudo apt-get update

Code:

sudo apt-get install rsibreak

+++

No joy. (But thanks for reminding me about that way of uninstalling - it enabled me to get rid of Stretchly, another program of the same sort that I'd tried unsuccessfully, which wasn't showing up in the Software Centre.)

There's one other thing that's reacently appeared in my Start menu unasked for - Nepomuk Cleaner, which apparently is a database maintenance program for a thing called Nepomuk whose purpose I can't comprehend at all however much I read the Wikipedia page. I'm really not sure when that snuck in, but it certainly hasn't been there long - might well have arrived along with one of those break timers. Might uninstalling Nepomuk and Nepomuk Cleaner be worth trying, or would that be a bad idea?

I've noticed two interesting things. The first is that there are a few things that do sometimes work: the Keyboard Layour Chart from the keyboard-language icon (sometimes) and the volume, Rhythmbox controls and Sound Settings from the volume icon. Other things (e.g. the language selector and Character Map option from the same menu as the Keyboared Layout Chart) do nothing. The second is that when I'd just restarted the computer, I tried the language selector and it DID work. I thought the problem must be fixed, but within a minute they'd all stopped working again. Any of this provide any clue?

It's particularly awkward now, because a bleep has appeared in the system tray telling me that it can't download updates and I should try doing the updates manually and watching for errors, by clicking "Show updates" from the menu. But, of course, the menu doesn't work.

I've got it working, quite by accident while testing it. I still don't know why it's like that or when the bug got in, but I've got it working.

It seems that you can actually open those menus by clicking on the icons with either the left or the right mouse button, and to select an item on the menu you must click with the same mouse button. Left followed by left works. Right followed by right works. Left followed by right doesn't work. Right followed by left doesn't work. I'd naturally been opening the menus with the right button (that being how you usually open context menus) and then clicking on the items with the left button.

RSIBreak working pretty well now, except that the "Skip/Postpone" buttons aren't appearing even though I set them to, but that's a separate thing and clearly RSIBreak's fault - I'll ask the makers about that if I can be bothered.

Does anyone else find this, especially if you're running Zorin 9? I'm curious now!

Incidentally, I checked and other context menus, e.g. in GEdit, don't do this - you can open them with the right button and then select an item with either button, as normal - so evidently this isn't a bug in Zorin/Ubuntu's general idea of how to do context menus.

Just remind yourself that Zorin 9 support ends in April 2019 - it will be here sooner than you think!