Bug#556948: gnome-volume-control-applet: Connection failed, reconnecting...

[Bob Tracy]

Package: gnome-media
Version: 2.28.1-1
Severity: normal

My .xsession-errors file is full of lines like the following:

** (gnome-volume-control-applet:19774): WARNING **: Connection failed, reconnecting...

If gnome-volume-control-applet is allowed to continue to run, say, overnight,
the session eventually hangs due to some kind of resource exhaustion. At that
point, a system reboot is required to restore graphical console access, because
the keyboard and mouse are no longer seen even if the X11 session is killed
and/or restarted. Killing the gnome-volume-control-applet process is a
workaround.

Other items of note:

(1) The speaker icon in the tray disappeared shortly after a gnome package
upgrade, probably due the connection failure noted above (although I didn't
notice or look for the error messages until a long-running session hung and
got my attention). With a freshly-started gnome session, after killing the
non-functional gnome-volume-control-applet, I added an instance to the tray
and it seems to work ok, i.e., I can pull up the mixer and everything works
the way it is supposed to as far as I can tell.

(2) "/usr/share/gnome/autostart/gnome-volume-control-applet.desktop"
(presumably the instance that can't connect) has "TryExec=/usr/bin/pulseaudio".
The instance I added says it's using gstreamer.

(3) Give the above two items, this report may be related to #541320. I have
not tried reconfiguring my gnome session per the procedure noted there.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: alpha

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-rc7
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages gnome-media depends on:
ii gnome-media-common 2.28.1-1 GNOME media utilities - common fil
ii gstreamer0.10-alsa [gs 0.10.25-6 GStreamer plugin for ALSA
ii gstreamer0.10-esd [gst 0.10.16-5 GStreamer plugin for ESD
ii gstreamer0.10-plugins- 0.10.16-1 GStreamer plugins from the "bad" s
ii gstreamer0.10-plugins- 0.10.25-6 GStreamer plugins from the "base"
ii gstreamer0.10-plugins- 0.10.16-5 GStreamer plugins from the "good"
ii gstreamer0.10-pulseaud 0.10.16-5 GStreamer plugin for PulseAudio
ii libatk1.0-0 1.28.0-1 The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii libc6.1 2.10.1-7 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libcairo2 1.8.8-2 The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii libcanberra-gtk0 0.22-1 Gtk+ helper for playing widget eve
ii libcanberra0 0.22-1 a simple abstract interface for pl
ii libfontconfig1 2.6.0-4 generic font configuration library
ii libfreetype6 2.3.11-1 FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii libgconf2-4 2.28.0-1 GNOME configuration database syste
ii libglade2-0 1:2.6.4-1 library to load .glade files at ru
ii libglib2.0-0 2.22.2-2 The GLib library of C routines
ii libgnome-media0 2.28.1-1 runtime libraries for the GNOME me
ii libgstreamer-plugins-b 0.10.25-6 GStreamer libraries from the "base
ii libgstreamer0.10-0 0.10.25-3 Core GStreamer libraries and eleme
ii libgtk2.0-0 2.18.3-1 The GTK+ graphical user interface
ii libpango1.0-0 1.26.0-1 Layout and rendering of internatio
ii libpulse-mainloop-glib 0.9.20-1 PulseAudio client libraries (glib
ii libpulse0 0.9.20-1 PulseAudio client libraries
ii libunique-1.0-0 1.1.6-1 Library for writing single instanc
ii libxml2 2.7.6.dfsg-1 GNOME XML library
ii x11-utils 7.4+1 X11 utilities
ii zlib1g 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-15 compression library - runtime

gnome-media recommends no packages.

Versions of packages gnome-media suggests:
ii pulseaudio 0.9.20-1 PulseAudio sound server

-- no debconf information

[Paul Menzel]

Post by Bob Tracy
** (gnome-volume-control-applet:19774): WARNING **: Connection failed, reconnecting...

As far as I know, that normally means that no PulseAudio server is
running.

Post by Bob Tracy
If gnome-volume-control-applet is allowed to continue to run, say, overnight,
the session eventually hangs due to some kind of resource exhaustion. At that
point, a system reboot is required to restore graphical console access, because
the keyboard and mouse are no longer seen even if the X11 session is killed
and/or restarted. Killing the gnome-volume-control-applet process is a
workaround.

Can you still reproduce this on an updated system? (gnome-media is still
the same version but maybe there was a bug in other packages gnome-media
depends on.)

It should certainly not hang. If you can reproduce it, could you debug
it further using GDB or strace(?) to see where it hangs and report this
upstream [1].

Post by Bob Tracy
(1) The speaker icon in the tray disappeared shortly after a gnome package
upgrade, probably due the connection failure noted above (although I didn't
notice or look for the error messages until a long-running session hung and
got my attention). With a freshly-started gnome session, after killing the
non-functional gnome-volume-control-applet, I added an instance to the tray
and it seems to work ok, i.e., I can pull up the mixer and everything works
the way it is supposed to as far as I can tell.

Could you open gnome-volume-control-applet in both cases and report to
us if the controls look the same.

Post by Bob Tracy
(2) "/usr/share/gnome/autostart/gnome-volume-control-applet.desktop"
(presumably the instance that can't connect) has "TryExec=/usr/bin/pulseaudio".
The instance I added says it's using gstreamer.

Do you have pulseaudio installed which is recommended by gnome-media?

Post by Bob Tracy
(3) Give the above two items, this report may be related to #541320. I have
not tried reconfiguring my gnome session per the procedure noted there.

I do not think so. The problem described in the bug title suggests that
you do not have pulseaudio installed.

The resource exhaustion should be a different problem.

Could you please also report what options are selected in
`gstreamer-properties`.


Thanks,

Paul


[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/browse.cgi?product=gnome-media