RE: No application or applet icons in gmome-shell-3.10.3

[John Frankish <j-frankish slb com>]

> On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 9:02 AM, John Frankish <j-frankish slb com> wrote:
> > gnome-session doesn't appear to be setting $ XDG_MENU_PREFIX, but
> perhaps I'm starting gnome-shell incorrectly?
> > $ cat ~/.xsession
> > ...
> > XDG_MENU_PREFIX="gnome-" "$DESKTOP" 2>/tmp/wm_errors & ...
> >
> > Where $DESKTOP=gnome-shell
>
>
> Well, gnome-session can only set XDG_MENU_PREFIX when it's executed :-)
>
> Admittedly I have no idea what else your .xsession contains, but the normal
> way to launch a GNOME session is via gnome-session (which will take care of
> starting other required components like gnome-settings-daemon and
> gnome-shell); also note that some functionality will not be available when
> gnome-session is not launched via GDM ...

As I'm working on a simple linux system I'm trying to keep things as uncomplicated as possible.

I've been unable to make gdm work, but I can launch gnome-session by setting $DESKTOP=gnome-session in the 
above. When I did this, I noticed that the upower icon appeared in the top panel, but like the nm-applet, it 
will not let me do anything due to permission issues.

By default the system I'm using has only one user and root and neither have a password, so I've no particular 
need of a logon.

If at all possible, I'd like to try and get the full functionality using gnome-shell and some appropriate 
linux-pam settings, but perhaps that's not possible?