This bug is two-fold.
First, you need to catch the destroy signal on the eggtrayicon, so
that you can recreate the icon if the notification area has been
destroyed (panel crash/restart)
Second, you need to check that the tray icon exists before
manipulating it :)

Created attachment 19813 [details] [review]
something like that...

proposed patch worked for me.

nevermind that.

proposed patch solved the tray icon refreshing upon panel restart, but
disabled
'next' 'prev' and 'pause' buttons in tray menu.

'show window' as well as left/right clicking tray window still works.

This patch doesn't seem to help - I get:

(rhythmbox:14290): Gdk-WARNING **: GdkWindow 0x2c00028 unexpectedly
destroyed

Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.

+ Trace 40272

*** Bug 123333 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

there's also a small variation on this problem that should be
addressed:  if rhythmbox is in the session, it sometimes starts
=before= the panel does, and you get a similar problem.

*** Bug 124473 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 124718 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 124462 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 127099 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 124462 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 127997 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 130039 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 130277 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 130515 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 134765 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Walters: fwiw, the 
(rhythmbox:14290): Gdk-WARNING **: GdkWindow 0x2c00028 unexpectedly
destroyed
warning happens with the two apps (gnomeicu and gossip) using the
notification area I tested.

*** Bug 137171 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

gaim seems to handle this nicely... i'll look into this bug, inspect the gaim
system tray plugin and see what they're doing with notification area destruction.

Colin, I believe this patch is correct, and it doesn't create anymore warnings
than the other users of the icon tray would. In the worst case, a warning is
better than a crash...

Ok, I forgot there was a patch here, thanks for reminding me :)

* committed rhythmbox-devel@gnome.org--2004/rhythmbox--main--0.8--patch-50

We should try to figure out how to fix the warnings and get it to come back
after a restart though.

still here with 0.8.8 on debian unstable

(Actually Seb doesn't have the problem, I do, but I couldn't reopen the bug. 
Seb is in full 2.8 Gnome, and Debian has a mix-up of 2.6 of 2.8, mainly 2.6, and
the bug is still there.)

-- 
Loic Minier

*** Bug 155297 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Please add dependency on bug 155509.

bug 155509 is a different problem, more general IMHO.  Here rhythmbox _exits_
when the NA is removed.

Regards,
-- 
Loic Minier

With current 0.8.8 (Debian sid 0.8.8-1), you can remove the notification area
from the panel, but when you close rhythmbox, you get:

(rhythmbox:4442): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid uninstantiatable type
`(null)' in cast to `GtkWidget'

(rhythmbox:4442): Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkwidget.c: line 2041
(gtk_widget_hide): assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(rhythmbox:4442): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid uninstantiatable type
`(null)' in cast to `GtkWidget'

(rhythmbox:4442): Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkwidget.c: line 1911
(gtk_widget_destroy): assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

These are triggered by lines 700 and 708 of shell/rb-shell.c in rb_shell_finalize:
gtk_widget_hide (GTK_WIDGET (shell->priv->tray_icon));
...
gtk_widget_destroy (GTK_WIDGET (shell->priv->tray_icon));

I have no idea how one is supposed to listen to get the notification area
removal message.

Loïc, do you still get the issue ? Seems to work fine here ...

Indeed, everything works fine now.  Might it be a new panel version?

(Debian is now in full 2.8.)

I get some warnings though:
bee% rhythmbox 

(rhythmbox:5383): Gdk-WARNING **: GdkWindow 0x3a00021 unexpectedly destroyed

(rhythmbox:5383): Gdk-WARNING **: GdkWindow 0x3a0001f unexpectedly destroyed

(rhythmbox:5383): Gdk-WARNING **: GdkWindow 0x3a0001e unexpectedly destroyed

(rhythmbox:5383): Gdk-WARNING **: GdkWindow 0x3a0001c unexpectedly destroyed

(rhythmbox:5383): Gdk-CRITICAL **: file gdkevents-x11.c: line 2386
(gdk_x11_get_server_time): assertion `!GDK_WINDOW_DESTROYED (window)' failed

Perhaps a panel issue yep. BTW since it doesn't crash I'm changing the severity
to minor and updating the summary.

Created attachment 39277 [details] [review]
or something like this

I still see this from time to time (using current debian gnome 2.8).
Looks to me like the "destroy-event" notification is never received
(GTK documentation says "You rarely get this signal, because most widgets
disconnect themselves from their window before they destroy it, so no widget
owns the window at destroy time.") so I tried the GtkObject "destroy" signal
instead, which works for me.

This doesn't fix the GDK warnings, but it does clean up references to destroyed
objects, which are a great way to suffer random crashes at random points in the
future if you like that sort of thing.

Patch is against 0.9; doesn't apply cleanly to 0.8, but the merge is trivial.

We now only get warnings when the notification area applet crashes, not when
it's simply removed.

2005-06-06  Bastien Nocera  <hadess@hadess.net>

        * shell/rb-shell.c: (rb_shell_construct), (tray_destroy_cb):
        Patch by jonathan@kaolin.hn.org to avoid crashes when the
        notification area disappears (Closes: #172224, #172225)