[Linux] Notifications Not Showing Properly

[Subash]

Notifications on Ubuntu are shown as alerts instead of regular notification.
Is this how notifications are supposed to look on ubuntu ?

[zcbenz]

What's the version of Ubuntu and were you using Unity?

[Subash]

It's a virtualbox VM with ubuntu 14.xx LTS.

[zcbenz]

Can you run notify-send summary body under terminal and see if it shows a proper notification? Notifications on Linux sometimes can not work very well in virtual machines.

[zcbenz]

I'm closing this for lack of information, please reopen if you can provide more information.

[sidoh]

I'm having this issue as well. I'm running ubutnu 14.04.2 LTS.

notify-send shows the system notifications I'd expect to see (growl-esque notifications in the top-right of my screen).

Notifications in the atom-shell app I'm trying to use and when I create them manually (with new Notification("msg")) show these ugly alert boxes:

Any idea how to resolve this?

[zcbenz]

@sidoh Can you download Atom editor and see if the sending a notification works in its devtools? On some distributions the notification can only show correctly if the application is "installed".

[sidoh]

I installed atom from this PPA:

http://www.webupd8.org/2014/05/atom-text-editor-ubuntu-ppa-update.html

Within atom's DevTools I'm getting the same thing (ugly alert with new Notification).

[paulcbetts]

I've seen this bug too, it's super distro-specific 😿

[zcbenz]

Can you try removing the libnotify.so shipped with atom-shell? It possible that the one shipped with atom-shell is too old. You may have to create a symbol link to system's libnotify library to make it run.

[sidoh]

I tried removing it. I relaunched atom and ran the same test with the same result.

I also dropped /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnotify.so.4 into the atom install folder with the same result.

Is this what you intended for me to do?

[zcbenz]

Yeah that is what I intended, thanks.

I think maybe the distribution has some kind of whitelist of sending notifications since different distribution yields different results, so reporting it to the distribution's bug tracker could probably gets some solution from the developers there.

[markbaas]

This bug is valid again. Worked fine with 0.28.3, but with 0.36.7 it fails.

[paulcbetts]

@markbaas Install Unity (you don't have to use it, just have it)

[markbaas]

@paulcbetts I'm using unity

[markbaas]

Major applications such as N1 and Slack are affected.

[markbaas]

Tried all electron versions from 0.28.3 until 0.36.6 and it breaks on 0.33.5

[markbaas]

Perhaps this worked in previous versions of Ubuntu, at least not in 16.04. On unity electron wants to use unity specific variables, this code breaks that:
https://github.com/atom/brightray/blob/master/browser/linux/libnotify_notification.cc#L31

// Look for the presence of libunity as our hint that we're under Ubuntu.
  base::FileEnumerator enumerator(base::FilePath("/usr/lib"),
                                  false, base::FileEnumerator::FILES);
  base::FilePath haystack;
  while (!((haystack = enumerator.Next()).empty())) {
    if (base::StartsWith(haystack.value(), "/usr/lib/libunity-",
                         base::CompareCase::SENSITIVE)) {
      unity_result = true;
      break;
    }
  }

Instead it should look at running processes IMO.

[paulcbetts]

@markbaas The problem is that fundamentally, the thing we need to detect is, "Does libnotify (or in reality, the service it signals via DBus) have Ubuntu's special patches applied that disable actions". There is no sane way to detect this.

Even if Unity isn't being used at all (i.e. Xubuntu based on Xfce, etc), if libnotify is patched, you'll get the dialog box. You can't detect based on distro name either, because lots of distros like Elementary OS are based on Ubuntu and therefore inherit Ubuntu's brain-damaged notifications while not being called "Ubuntu". While I'm totally on-board with coming up with a better heuristic (since this one fails too in a number of scenarios), it's Not So Easy to do so.

[paulcbetts]

It appears that Ubuntu 16.04 will break the code in Brightray to detect this, we'll have to update it or come up with a better plan

[markbaas]

I propose the following file change. atom/brightray#197

I couldn't test it as I wasn't able to compile electron (tried all weekend).

[maherelgamil]

i have the same issue in ubuntu 16.04 :(

[johnnagro]

+1 16.04

[ennui93]

Also seeing this in a fresh, native install of Ubuntu 16.04.

notify-send summary body on the Terminal gives desktop notification as expected.

Slack app emits these:

Largest annoyance is that the alerts stack up and persist, so one needs to click Cancel for every message received.

[conradkdotcom]

I was having the problem described here, on Arch Linux. I ended up doing the following, which is good enough for me, in that it now displays notifications in a less intrusive way:

sudo pacman -R notify-osd
sudo pkill notify-osd
sudo pacman -S mate-notification-daemon

Note that I use the mate-notification-daemon, even though I don't use the Mate desktop. It works fine for me on the i3 window manager.

I hope this helps.

[TrafeX]

I've the same issue on Ubuntu 16.04. I can't use the workaround mentioned above, other programs need notify-osd. Any other workarounds? This breaks the notifications for both Slack and Nylas.

[davidbanham]

I suspect this is related to this bug logged against notify-osd.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/notify-osd/+bug/1277430

I'm seeing this behaviour on my system with Electron apps (Slack).

This works correctly:

notify-send body summary

But this causes the undesired behaviour:

notify-send -t 0 body summary

[jamesadney]

If you're skimming this looking for a quick workaround for distracting Slack notifications:

sudo touch /usr/lib/libunity-electron_notification_fix

See: #465 (comment)

[3v1n0]

Yeah, @jamesadney is what is expected to work.

The reason why this broke in 16.04 is that unity moved to multi-arch, thus the libunity files have been moved to /usr/lib/${ARCH}/libunity-*.
However I think that using this method for checking the desktop is wrong. A better one (not the best, but still) is the one proposed in electron/brightray#197, although it should be fixed as XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP has to be handled as a :-separated list.

So, please fix electron.

PS: I'm an Ubuntu unity developer, if you need anything else. Also, about this topic, please give a look at bug #5052 :)

[paulcbetts]

@3v1n0 We would really love to detect patched notifier in a non-crazy way, do you have any better ideas about how to do this?

[3v1n0]

@paulcbetts I think the best way is just getting the server info from libnotify or the supported caps.

Just for being clear, here's what you get when running notify-osd:

>>> from gi.repository import Notify
>>> Notify.get_server_info()
(True, 'notify-osd', 'Canonical Ltd', '1.0', '1.1')
>>> Notify.get_server_caps()
['body', 'body-markup', 'icon-static', 'image/svg+xml', 'x-canonical-private-synchronous', 'x-canonical-append', 'x-canonical-private-icon-only', 'x-canonical-truncation', 'private-synchronous', 'append', 'private-icon-only', 'truncation']

[marcosfede]

still present for the slack app on ubuntu 16.04. any fix for this?

[MarshallOfSound]

@marcosfede The slack app will have to update electron versions before it is fixed

[WystJenkins]

I got the same bug in Slack since updating to Ubuntu 16.04 .. no virtual machine

[philippgerard]

Same here with 16.04 in Franz app and Nylas N1.

[MarshallOfSound]

@philippgerard I'm just going to reiterate. Just because it is fixed here (upstream) doesn't mean that the individual apps that use electron have updated to a version of electron that has the fix....

[Arihantar]

So do we have a solution to this above issue. My Slack and every other notifications are coming as alerts after updating to Ubuntu 16.04.

[mcg]

@Arihantar Workaround posted in this thread, and you can also export ELECTRON_USE_UBUNTU_NOTIFIER=1

[xzitlou]

I tried export ELECTRON_USE_UBUNTU_NOTIFIER=1 but I'm still getting the same annoying Electron alerts on my Slack application..

[mcg]

@xzitlou How to use that workaround is probably not for this bug thread. See #465 (comment) for another option that may work for you.

[cYbercOsmOnauT]

Had the same problem with Slack. #465 (comment) helped me

[WystJenkins]

thanks @jamesadney #465 (comment) solved the Slack notification bug!

[jurgenhaas]

I'm on Ubuntu 16.04 using Mattermost desktop and #465 (comment) removed the annoying notifications but now I'm not getting any notifications at all.

[weeman1337]

Since I updated to Ubuntu 16.04 I'm also affected by this bug.

[mhsiddiqui]

I am having same bug in ubuntu 16.04.

[cYbercOsmOnauT]

Guys... read the comment that was linked in this thread several times

[ildella]

@MarshallOfSound is there a specific commit with the electron fix? Or better, is the fix inluded in one of the last release? https://github.com/electron/electron/releases Thanks

[MarshallOfSound]

@ildella It was fixed in electron release 0.37.6