Ubuntu – How to fix non working Dropbox icon on Xubuntu 14.04 LTS 64

dropboxiconsxfce-panelxubuntu

A few hours ago the dropbox icon in Xubuntu 14.04 stopped working.
The icon is black with a red slashed zero. I cannot click on it to bring up the dropbox menu. I believe there was an update right before this happened.
I reinstalled then purged dropbox. I even deleted all associated files and hidden folders and after I installed it again. Still, the icon is not working. Tried to stop and start the service… again nothing.

Best Answer

Just got this bug on my Xubuntu 15.10, broken icon and no way to open the menu. I think the bug is connected to Dropbox starting to use "indicator area" for their tray icon instead of "notification area" and the sudo-fix just happens to work because of some environment variables are not in use with sudo sessions.

At least for me this problem can be fixed by running:

dropbox stop && DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="" dropbox start

This seems to move the icon back to "notification area" which fixes both icon and menu. This way the daemon runs as a normal user and not as root.

EDIT: If you create your own startup script for Dropbox based on this fix, remember to disable the default startup script with "dropbox autostart n" command (Thank StockBreak for this one, saved me some time this morning).

EDIT2: ...and for some reason I still had to remove the autostart setting from Dropbox GUI (click icon >> Preferences >> Start Dropbox on system startup). Hope it stays off after this one.

EDIT: To implement this fix in a script that run every time session starts, try this solution: https://askubuntu.com/a/795864/496493

Related Question