when reboot is needed, very wide slice of UN flag is displayed instead of appropriate icon

[woozalia]

Ubuntu-MATE 24.10
Same problem on at least 2 different laptops (mix of AMD and Intel).
16 GB RAM in all cases, plenty of drive space

Screenshot shows top of screen (where the applet is positioned) when reboot is needed. (It took me awhile to figure out that "reboot needed" is what triggers this issue.)

This was also a problem in Ubuntu-MATE 24.04. I think that's when it first appeared.

I'm guessing that the wrong image-file is being summoned, but I can't tell where that is taking place -- possibly in a library, in which case the bug could be in the library.

[lukefromdc]

What app is calling for a reboot? MATE doesn't provide any of the software update tools. This bug could be in that updater's indicator code and not from MATE at all. A clash of icon names is possible if the app installs an icon into one directory normally used for icons and the name matches the UN flag, but that icon name (provided by mate-icon-theme) is
/usr/share/icons/mate/scalable/animations/_united_nations.svg and I doubt that anything other than libmatekbd would be calling that by name

[lukefromdc]

Note that I don't have any software management tools beyond synaptic and its APT and dpkg backends installed so naturally I've never seen this.

[woozalia]

I only have what Ubuntu MATE installs by default, as far as software management (except I think I may have had to manually install Synaptic and xapian-index). By "reboot needed", I mean that the updater is telling me there were kernel updates or something which can't be installed until the system is rebooted. I think there was also a notif popup about it at one point.

The thing which makes me think this has at least something to do with mate-indicator-applet is that if I remove the applet, the flag-slice goes away. (I'd have considered that a solution except that it also removes all the other indicators provided by the applet, and this applet seems to offer the selection of stuff that's closest to what I need.)

Maybe next time it happens, I should try temporarily replacing this applet with each of the other indicator applets, to see if the problem occurs with any of them as well or if it's unique to this one.

/usr/share/icons/mate/scalable/animations/_united_nations.svg does look like the image I'm seeing -- I'll try to confirm, next time, that replacing this image changes what's being (partially) displayed.

P.S. Further thought: note that in the screenshot, the flag-slice appears between the Discord icon and the Bluetooth icon. Normally there's nothing there. Both of those icons are provided by this applet, so the flag is clearly part of this applet's display -- although of course the choice of image may be coming from a backend library that's separate from the applet.

[lukefromdc]

Almost all distros include a software update, since too few people manage this manually. There are exactly two places this bug would likely be: in the indicator provided by the software updater, or in the indicator applet. One way to tell is this: take the indicator applet out of the panel, ensure the notification area applet is IN the panel, then open dconf-editor and navigate to org>mate>panel>general and make sure enable sni support is turned ON. This allows indictors to display in the tray rather than use the indicator applet. If you still get the problem, the error is almost certainly in the software updator or some library. If you do not, its in the indicator applet. Note that on my non-Ubuntu based setup tray sni support is what I use not the indicator applet

[woozalia]

Bug reproduced, running some tests. None of the following produced any apparent change in behavior:

• Renamed /usr/share/icons/mate/scalable/animations/_united_nations.svg to ..._united_nations.hide.svg
• Removed "Indicator Applet" from panel, and then put it back.
• Copied ...us.svg to ..._united_nations.hide.svg
• Removed "Indicator Applet" from panel, and then put it back.
• Removed "Indicator Applet" from panel, and then added "Indicator Applet Complete" instead

This is somewhat inconclusive, as the system may have cached the file and I'm not fully unloading whatever piece thereof is retaining it. Unfortunately, rebooting will remove the "System restart required" condition, so the problem would disappear regardless.

(Note: replacing "Indicator Applet" with "Indicator Applet Appmenu" caused a complete lack of icons/images in that part of the panel, showing only the text "No Indicators".)

Next diagnostic steps:

• I've turned on sni support (it was, in fact, turned off) -- no apparent change, but maybe after a restart?
• I'm leaving the duplicate/renamed us.svg file in place, to see if it affects what is displayed the next time the system wants a reboot.

[lukefromdc]

Pretty sure you have to restart mate-panel (which logging out and back in or rebooting will surely do) to see the effect of turning SNI support on or off.

[davidjkrause]

This issue happens to me on multiple machines as well running Ubuntu 24.04 Mate, and just today I also realized it is the restart required triggering the large logo. Left-clicking on the logo brings up the text "System Restart Required" below the logo.

Based on this thread, I installed dconf-editor, changed the SNI setting to enabled, logged out and logged back in. After a while, the large logo was back just as shown in the initial post.

Any suggestions on how to narrow this down further?

[lukefromdc]

Might be an issue with whatever software updater is sending the "reboot required" notification, especially since you just proved it occurs both in the indicator applet and in the panel's native SNI support. With no other app doing this, we should presume whatever software updater Ubuntu-MATE is currently using is the source of the problem. Not on Ubuntu and I don't have any auto-updaters installed due to bandwidth issues (I use manual management of this), so I can't duplicate it or work on it anyway.

[davidjkrause]

Today I looked into the source code for update-notifier, and found that when a restart is required, an indication is sent to the tray applet to show the "un-reboot" icon.

Knowing that, I searched wider for issues around "un-reboot" and a large flag, and that led me to

https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/whenever-my-computer-needs-to-restart-after-updating-a-picture-of-the-united-nations-appears-in-the-notification-area/27402/5

There will likely be a fix from MATE eventually, but I did the three steps shown in one of the comments as a quick fix, and it worked great:

mv /usr/share/icons/Yaru/scalable/status/un.svg /usr/share/icons/Yaru/scalable/status/un.unitednations.svg
ln -s /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/un-reboot.png /usr/share/icons/Yaru/scalable/status/un.svg
killall mate-panel

This probably breaks something else, but I'm not sure I care much about the un flag svg in other cases, and it made the huge blue flag slice go away, so good enough for me...

[lukefromdc]

From this we now know exactly what the problem is. To fix it, update-notifier' icon (icon UN Update Notifier), the cc icon, and several others either must be renamed by the app authors or alternately MATE could change the names of all the flags to stop these name collisions. I don't have time to work on renaming every flag in mate-icon-theme myself but I am OK with either approach. Note that we did not create this problem of course.