As per Robert Love's suggestion in http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341320, I tried doing "sudo NetworkManager --no-daemon" and lo and behold, the nm-applet icon appears again. Now the mystery has shifted to why the daemon crashes in the first place.
(and also why n-m thinks my Broadcom 4309 is a wired interface, but that's a different bug). -- nm-applet vanished from tray https://launchpad.net/bugs/43379 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs