Missing system tray icon

Using an old trick to get it working in Natty, I had some success. First I queried (get command) the current whitelist for old-style notifications, and then copied it and added Skype to it (set command). After reboot Skype appeared when loaded.

gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['JavaEmbeddedFrame', 'Wine', 'scp-dbus-service', 'Skype']"

After making this change I have noticed that the icon only appears when I start Skype from my unity panel, not when I add skype to my Startup applications. Seems strange, but there seems to be an extra permission or setting that still has not been enabled. For now, I just start skype manually after boot.

I also found the same behavior using the amd64 version (2.2.0.35-1) downloadable directly from Skype.
http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-ubuntu-64

I'm back to the skype:i386 for now as that seems to be the preference now with multi-arch.

Recently a broken amd64 skype appeared in the the Natty partner archive. This one just plain doesn't work, but is easily installable creating a separate issue people trying to figure out notification issues might trip over. It is tempting since it cleans up all the i386 multi-arch packages.

apt-get install skype:i386 if you end up executing the following (note I use the simulate flag -s below)

root@oneiric:~# apt-get install skype -s
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libkrb5-3:i386 libk5crypto3:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libqt4-declarative:i386
  liblcms1:i386 libqt4-script:i386 libqt4-network:i386 libqt4-dbus:i386
  libgnutls26:i386 libtasn1-3:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libexpat1:i386
  libqt4-xmlpatterns:i386 libavahi-common-data:i386 libxcb1:i386 libxau6:i386
  libpanel-applet-4-0 libcups2:i386 libqtcore4:i386 libkrb5support0:i386
  libice6:i386 libxdmcp6:i386 libgcrypt11:i386 libkeyutils1:i386
  libqt4-sql:i386 libasound2:i386 libxrender1:i386 libqt4-xml:i386
  libxss1:i386 libtiff4:i386 libjpeg62:i386 libqtgui4:i386
  libavahi-client3:i386 libx11-6:i386 libfontconfig1:i386 libsm6:i386
  libgssapi-krb5-2:i386 libxi6:i386 libaudio2:i386 libxt6:i386 libxv1:i386
  libxext6:i386 libavahi-common3:i386 libmng1:i386 libgpg-error0:i386
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  skype:i386*
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  skype
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Purg skype:i386 [2.2.0.35-0natty1]
Inst skype (2.2.0.35-0natty1 Partner archive:11.04/natty [amd64])
Conf skype (2.2.0.35-0natty1 Partner archive:11.04/natty [amd64])

After installing the skype amd64 (executing the command without -s in my last comment), allowing the autoremove to purge the i386 depedencies (as shown in the simulation above too) and re-installng using "apt-get install skype:i386" my skype icon now appears on startup too.

There were some xserver updates among other things last night, so I'm not sure what caused it exactly to work, but it does now in all cases.

I see this bug in Natty, started today. previously the tray icon was working OK.

I actually find that mine appears on boot sometimes, but other times is missing on Oneiric. It is inconsistent at best. @Tomas, yours may return :)

I found out the reason it disappeared: I connected an external screen!
One screen == one skype tray icon, two screens == 0 skype icons.

@iMac: the so-called amd64 deb package Skype is offering is marked as a 64bit package so that dpkg installs it without complaining, but the provided binary is 32bit. You can check with "file /usr/bin/skype".

I suspected as much, thanks. I am using the multiarch + i386 version and tracking comments over at 854448, which had a resolution that did not work for my case.