GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 333433
Enabling sounds in GDM prevents sounds from ESD upon login
Last modified: 2010-06-04 19:58:06 UTC
Please describe the problem: Enabling sounds for GDM via system->administration->login will prevent sounds from being played via esd once the user has logged in. Disabling sounds from GDM and ESD works again. Steps to reproduce: 1. Use gdmsetup to enable sound actions 2. gdmrestart 3. Log in Actual results: Sounds are played at GDM, but afterward no sounds can be heard through ESD, even if it is running Expected results: Sounds in ESD continue to work Does this happen every time? Yes Other information: Commenting out sounds in custom.conf will fix it. There is another bug where gdmsetup won't REALLY disable sounds, filing that bug too.
When GDM plays sounds it uses the SoundProgram as defined in the GDM configuration files (usually /usr/bin/play on Linux). Are you sure that this problem is a problem with the way GDM is playing the sounds, or is the problem with the tool used to play sounds (/usr/bin/play) on your system? Does using a different tool on your system work better?
This argument doesn't seem to be being created when using gdmsetup to enable sounds. So if there is no argument for SoundProgram, what does gdm use?
For the Login Ready sound it just calls gdk_beep (not gdm_common_login_sound in gui/gdmcommon.c) However, for the success & failure sounds *do* use SoundProgram (refer to play_login_sound in daemon/slave.c). Note that daemon/gdm.h will compile in the "/usr/bin/play" program as the soundprogram default value, so it will use this even if it is commented out of defaults.conf and custom.conf.
Ok. So it could possibly be a problem with /usr/bin/play. I'll think of some ways of trying to test that on my system.
More info, the playing of just login successful will also prevent further sounds from ESD. I also went to a login screen, switched to a VT and used /usr/bin/play on the same file GDM would call, then logged in. I was able to play sounds through GDM just fine. Same with calling /usr/bin/play at random times after login, sounds still work. This does seem to have some interaction with GDM to cause the bug.
That is annoying and weird. If you look at the code in play_login_sound in daemon/slave.c, you'll see all GDM is doing is calling /usr/bin/play, so I don't see how this could be causing an ESD problem. If someone figures out what the problem is, I'd be happy to fix the code, accept a patch, etc.
Hm. This bug is set to NEEDINFO for quite some time now. I am reopening, as I can't see any open question. Feel free to close if this issue is obsolete.
Thanks for taking the time to report this bug. However, you are using a version that is too old and not supported anymore. GNOME developers are no longer working on that version, so unfortunately there will not be any bug fixes for the version that you use. By upgrading to a newer version of GNOME you could receive bug fixes and new functionality. You may need to upgrade your Linux distribution to obtain a newer version of GNOME. Please feel free to reopen this bug if the problem still occurs with a newer version of GNOME.