Friday, August 5, 2011

Allow apps to display tray icons in Unity

Only whitelisted apps are allowed to show tray icons in Unity. By default, the apps in the whitelist on my PC are JavaEmbeddedFrame, Mumble, Wine, Skype, hp-systray, and scp-dbus-service.

To show the current whitelisted programs, run
gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist
To add a new program; for example, Tasque, to the current whitelist, run
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['JavaEmbeddedFrame', 'Mumble', 'Wine', 'Skype', 'hp-systray', 'scp-dbus-service', 'Tasque']"
Alternatively, we can do this through a GUI using a tool called "dconf-editor". It's part of the "dconf-tools" package. In dconf-editor, go to
desktop -> unity -> panel
and select "systray-whitelist" on the right panel.


After change, strangely doing a relogin didn't seem to take this into effect for me. I had to reboot the PC. I didn't try just killing X Window though.

Refs
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/03/how-to-hide-or-show-app-tray-applets-in-ubuntu-11-04/
http://ubuntu.sun.ac.za/wiki/index.php/Show_tray_icons_in_unity

Thursday, August 4, 2011

vReplicator fails with the message: - " 'Consolidate Helper' snapshot found"

VMWare ESX/ESXi creates a temporary snapshot called "Consolidated Helper" during the snapshot deletion/consolidation. It should be deleted automatically but if it's left behind (possibly due to performance issue or insufficient disk space), vReplicator will fail. To fix this, make sure there's enough free space and then just remove this snapshot manually through Snapshot Manager. After it reaches 95%, be patient as it may take a very long time depending on the virtual disk size to commit the snapshot. If it still fails, try creating a new snapshot and then select "Delete All".

Refs:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1003302
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/274077
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/121642