Missing date & time from top panel of Unity Desktop - Ubuntu 14.04

Question

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 an my machine and since the last upgrade from 13.10 to 14.04 the date&time is missing in the top panel of Unity. This machine was originally installed with Ubuntu 12.10. I upgraded it from 12.10→13.04, from 13.04→13.10 and last week from 13.10→14.04.

I tried every solution found in this question: Missing date & time from top panel of Unity Desktop. But nothing of all this works :-(

I tried the following things:

• reinstalling indicator-datetime
• sudo apt-get remove --purge indicator-datetime and install it again
• sudo dpkg-reconfigure --frontend noninteractive tzdata
• sudo killall unity-panel-service

and of course log out/log in again and so on...

Where can I find log files for the indicator or where could help me otherwise with this problem?

Trying to debug:

$ locate indicator-datetime-service
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-datetime/indicator-datetime-service
$ /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-datetime/indicator-datetime-service
Indicator-Datetime-Message: indicator-datetime exiting; failed/lost bus ownership

Solution 1

Try reseting its configuration

dconf reset -f /com/canonical/indicator/datetime/ 

If it didn't show up try kill it, it should restart

pkill -f datetime

---

For similar cases, better to explain how you may get it:

1. Check if it is running, if yes then possibly a configuration problem

   $ ps ax | grep -i indicator-datetime
    2863 ?        Ssl    0:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-datetime/indicator-datetime-service
    4043 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep -i indicator-datetime
   

2. Check for where is its configuration. Look for /etc/ or dconf in /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/. List package files using:

   $ dpkg -L indicator-datetime
   [...]
   /etc/xdg/autostart/indicator-datetime.desktop
   /usr
   /usr/share
   /usr/share/glib-2.0
   /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas
   /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.canonical.indicator.datetime.gschema.xml
   [...]
   

3. Locate its dconf path:

   $ grep path /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.canonical.indicator.datetime.gschema.xml
       <schema id="com.canonical.indicator.datetime" path="/com/canonical/indicator/datetime/" gettext-domain="indicator-datetime">
   

Solution 2

This worked with me when I faced the same problem:

killall unity-panel-service

without 'sudo' by the way.

Solution 3

I had exactly the same problem, which that some Language Support libraries are missing.

If you go to:

Settings → Language Support

The system will automatically update the regional formats and the time and date will be back after you log out and in.

Solution 4

Just kill the indicator-datetime-service process. (This process will get started automatically)

For ex:

$ ps ax | grep -i indicator-datetime
2863 ?        Ssl    0:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-datetime/indicator-datetime-service
4043 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep -i indicator-datetime

kill -9 <pid-of-indicator-datetime-service>
kill -9 2863

View more solutions

Comments

[user.dz]

locate indicator-datetime-service to find where it is installed then run it in terminal. Report if there any error message.

[Bernd]

@Sneetsher $ locate indicator-datetime-service /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-datetime/indicator-datet‌​ime-service $ /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-datetime/indicator-datet‌​ime-service Indicator-Datetime-Message: indicator-datetime exiting; failed/lost bus ownership $ sudo /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-datetime/indicator-datet‌​ime-service no error output, when running indicator-datetime-service with sudo

[user.dz]

failed/lost bus ownership means it was running already.

[user.dz]

try reseting its configuration dconf reset -f /com/canonical/indicator/datetime/ . didn't work try pkill -f datetime then /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-datetime/indicator-datet‌​ime-service

[Bernd]

dconf reset -f /com/canonical/indicator/datetime/ worked and it shows the time again. But I think I found a bug and I think I know what causes the issue. Are there any logs for the datetime-indicator to verify my assumption?

[user.dz]

well.. the only info I could find is making a link to/copy of /usr/share/libindicator/80indicator-debugging in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ but I am not sure which log (may be /var/log/syslog like session logging). (info source: dpkg -L libindicator3-tools)

[Barney Woodrow]

You Could try downloading unity tweak tool. Then go to the panel menu, you should see date and time options there.

[Bernd]

Tried, but there was no missing language support

[Nicky De Maeyer]

the dconf reset did it for me, thx

[matv1]

Actually, weird as it sounds, I can confirm this solution. Apparently starting the langauge support panel, some broken libs are indeed (i guess not downloaded but) reenabled. Therefore a +1

[Steve Kroon]

The clock tab is greyed out for me - I can't edit the settings there....

[danidee]

Thanks the dconf reset worked, i didn't even need to kill the datetime process

[Promise Chukwudum]

dconf didn't work for me but pkill did on my Ubuntu 14.04

[Lambart]

Warning: the dconf trick doesn't just restore the clock. It also resets your clock settings, so if you have customized them... goodbye to your settings. I wish I hadn't tried that -- pkill datetime had already restored the clock to my UI.

[user.dz]

@Lambart , yes it does reset all datetime settings, but that seems not a big deal for most users.

[bluenote10]

+1 I had the missing-clock-problem a few times already, and this worked reliably as an immediate fix. For the record, indicator-datetime is installed on my machine, so apparently no need to remove/purge it for me.

[Vipul Bhatt]

+1solved Bug

[Rosamunda]

The command dconf reset and killing the process after that did the trick for me, thank you!

[babin ahmad]

please read this