When guake is first started it says "Guake is already running,"

Confirmed with guake 0.4.0-4 on Jaunty.

The same error occurs on my computer.
'~$ uname -a
Linux Amilo7600 2.6.28-11-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:57:59 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux'
Running all current updates.
I agree with Shahar Or .
The message's text is likely a wrong translation from Portuguese and should rather read
"Guake is running now,"

I can also confirm this with the latest version on Ubuntu Karmic Alpha 4, 0.4.0-4. I'm reporting this upstream.

I'm having this issue too. Why is it set to "Won't Fix"? It is confirmed by multiple people. By the way, the upstream bug report has the status "Won't Fix" too.

It has only been set to Won't Fix upstream. Upstream gave the following explanation:
"This is not a translation error nor a bug since when you see this notification guake is actually already running :-)"

I'm reopening the bug upstream.

There may be a fix released but only at the moon. In Ubuntu Karmic Guake! 0.4.0 it has not arrived.
So dear Bug Watch Updater please do not issue such false statements.
The bug persists.
'~ uname -r; 2.6.31-14-generic'

The Fix Released message was sent by the Bug Watch Updater, which watches linked upstream bug reports and edits their status. This means that it was fixed by the developers of Guake. However, Ubuntu still needs to update its version of Guake to fix this, as you can see by looking at the status of 'guake (Ubuntu)'.

This bug is fixed in Debian Guake 0.4.1-1

A new version of Guake was uploaded to Lucid this morning. That release should fix this bug and I'm therefore setting the status to Fix Released. If you are still able to reproduce this bug in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, please feel free to reopen the bug.

"guake (0.4.1-3) unstable; urgency=low

  * Missing dep on python-gconf (Closes: #573413)

guake (0.4.1-2) unstable; urgency=low

  * python-glade2 disappeared (?) (Closes: #568935)

guake (0.4.1-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release (Closes: #533711, #529181, #510506)
    (LP: #437880, #348018, #400081)
  * Change of my email address
  * Torsten removed from the uploader (on his request)
  * Update of Standards-Version to version 3.8.4
  * DM-Upload-Allowed removed
 -- Lucas Nussbaum <email address hidden> Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:46:09 +0100"

I have this problem on my Karmic system. Note that guake -p on this system also fails to show the preferences panel, as documented.

On my Lucid system, guake -p brings up the preferences panel correctly.

Note that on both systems, guake run from within my zsh configuration doesn't work properly. When I press F12 it flashes and then disappears. I was able to fix this on Lucid using the -p option to change the default shell to /bin/sh and then within the working console, run zsh under /bin/sh. That works fine.

However, I have yet to fix this on my Karmic system because guake -p is not giving me access to the preferences panel, and is instead telling me that guake is already running.

Note also on my Karmic system, guake sits in background going crazy looking for resources on the file system. Running under strace (logging to a file), in background (without pressing F12), my strace file contains 110,500 lines, and time reported 22% of my CPU consumed by guake during this interval.

There are 11,000 ENOENT messages concerning /usr/share/locale/_all_kinds_of_stuff_/guake.mo

Under Lucid, now that I have it running, guake appears well behaved. My shell configuration there is mostly the same. In a couple of weeks, when I'm braver, I'll update my main system to Lucid and hopefully this guake strangeness from Karmic goes away.