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Bug 497795 - faders are jumping around and mute gets on and off radmonly
faders are jumping around and mute gets on and off radmonly
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: gnome-media
Classification: Deprecated
Component: gst-mixer
2.20.x
Other All
: Normal major
: ---
Assigned To: gnome media maintainers
gnome media maintainers
: 558186 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2007-11-18 03:13 UTC by Christoph Anton Mitterer
Modified: 2010-05-17 11:28 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: 2.21/2.22



Description Christoph Anton Mitterer 2007-11-18 03:13:33 UTC
Please describe the problem:
I experience this problem since about GNOME 2.17/2.18...
When I move the faders of the main window or the notification area icon of gnome-volume-control... the moved fader jumps weird around (and the volume of the channel turns up or down).
It also happens that it gets completely muted and it also happens that the binding between left channel and right channel is deactivated and both channels jump around.
btw: This does not happen with alsamixer.
Perhaps it has to do with my soundcard (TerraTec Aureon 7.1 Universe)... it provides more complex mixer interfaces than "normal" cards.... and I've already hat problems around GNOME 2.14 that gnome-volume-controll crashed when I've selected this soundcard as a device.

Steps to reproduce:


Actual results:


Expected results:


Does this happen every time?


Other information:
Comment 1 Marc-Andre Lureau 2008-01-19 19:35:25 UTC
What is your Linux distribution?
Comment 2 Christoph Anton Mitterer 2008-01-20 23:40:16 UTC
Debian sid
Comment 3 Kjartan Maraas 2008-03-09 11:40:40 UTC
I'm seeing this with a SB Audigy USB card now and have also seen it with the internal card in my laptop earlier so I don't think this is specific to one card.

Currently I can't really use the gnome mixer applet or main app at all with this card. I had to start kmix to get sound back after trying to use gnome-volume-control :-)
Comment 4 Kjartan Maraas 2008-03-09 11:45:40 UTC
This is on fedora rawhide btw.
Comment 5 Christoph Anton Mitterer 2008-03-09 12:50:29 UTC
Unfortunately I still suffer from this bug, too.
But as (nearly) always with GNOME,... nobody cares about it.
Comment 6 Marc-Andre Lureau 2008-03-09 13:23:37 UTC
(In reply to comment #5)
> Unfortunately I still suffer from this bug, too.
> But as (nearly) always with GNOME,... nobody cares about it.
> 

That's simply not true. Unfortunately, it's difficult to reproduce and to point out miswritten code!
Comment 7 André Klitzing 2008-04-29 14:06:57 UTC
Same problem here... ArchLinux with HP nx6325 on Gnome 2.22.1 (and before).
Comment 8 Andrea Antolini 2008-05-01 11:56:42 UTC
Same problem more or less...I don't known if this could help, but I noticed that it happens only if compiz is running and you use a GTK theme engine different from clearlooks (at least seems that using a gtk theme based on clearlook engine and if compiz is running problem don't appear, so I know, it's really strange).. 
Without compiz running, using any gtk themes engine,  problem is not present...

* slackware 12.0
* kernel 2.6.25
* gnome 2.22.1 compiled from scratch
* gtk+  2.12.9
* glib 2.16.3
* compiz 0.7.4

regards Andrea
Comment 9 Erich Schubert 2008-05-12 23:33:13 UTC
I read that this might be a kernel issue, actually.
For me it started with Kernel 2.6.25 release candidates.

See also
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10300

The current 'best bet' is actually somewhere in the evdev driver?
Comment 10 Christoph Kindl 2008-05-26 20:49:39 UTC
I have the same problem on Arch Linux with Gnome 2.22.1 since a kernel update from 2.6.24 to 2.6.25 ... I cannot confirm that without Compiz this problem doesn't appear. I'm sorry but I can't provide further information .. Some Arch Linux users who have this problem try to find a reason for it.. (see http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=372669)
Comment 11 Christoph Kindl 2008-05-26 21:20:11 UTC
I tried to capture a video that shows that missbehaviour. (I'm sorry for the bad quality, I will try to recapture them. Please comment if the files could not be opened)

http://80.190.53.236/~christoph/v1.ogg
http://80.190.53.236/~christoph/v2.ogg
Comment 12 Christoph Anton Mitterer 2008-05-26 21:25:56 UTC
Nice video,.. this shows nearly exactly what happens here, with the exception, that in my case, the mute control goes randomly off and on, too.
Comment 13 Lisa Denia 2008-05-26 22:39:02 UTC
Same problem here, using intel8x0 driver since 2.6.25 on Archlinux with Gnome 2.22.1.
Archlinux, Ubuntu and Fedora does not patch the driver. Everything worked on 2.6.24. I think nothing special has changed between 2.6.24 and 2.6.25:
http://ubuntuusers.de/paste/226572/

So, whats the problem?

By the way, as an workaround you can set gnome-volume-control to use the OSS mixer.
Comment 14 Lisa Denia 2008-05-26 23:09:00 UTC
The problem seems to not rely on your choosen gtk engine. If you remove the update callback for the volume-control-thingies, they will move as they should. But your sound will be messed up.
Comment 15 Lisa Denia 2008-05-27 19:18:36 UTC
Mh, I think I've found something interesting.
Close all apps that access the mixer. Close alsamixer, close KMix, delete that speaker-icon thingy in your panel. Set everything in gnome-sound-properties to anything different than your soundcard(e.g. the first ones to ALSA, "Default Mixer Tracks" to another soundcard or your soundcard with OSS mixer).
Now open gnome-volume-control. Start music or something and access your soundcard with gnome-volume-control. You will notice that your controls will work MUCH better. If you re-enable all your stuff(open alsamixer for example) you will notice that it is as bad as before.

Can you confirm that?
Comment 16 Christoph Kindl 2008-05-27 21:53:19 UTC
> 
> Can you confirm that?
> 

Yep I can confirm that.
Comment 17 Marc-Andre Lureau 2008-05-27 22:06:48 UTC
ok, now we have to found the nasty loops in the UIs..

I suspect the statusbar & volume-control to update the mixer when the mixer itself is updated, causing strange and spurious interactions...
Comment 18 Christoph Anton Mitterer 2008-05-30 11:52:31 UTC
If you do that (I mean deactivating everything and then trying the faders),... does this really change the mixersettings?
It might be, that gnome-mixer is just not "connected" to the alsa mixer at all, and that could be the reason why it works?!
Comment 19 Lisa Denia 2008-06-10 06:38:06 UTC
Hello,


what do you meann Christoph? Deactivating/uncommenting the update callback in gnome-volume-control, or removing all that applets etc?

By the way, the latest update to Gnome 2.22.2 on Arch Linux fixed the problem. Thank you ;).
Comment 20 Andrea Antolini 2008-06-10 12:28:50 UTC
(In reply to comment #19)

> By the way, the latest update to Gnome 2.22.2 on Arch Linux fixed the problem.
> Thank you ;).
> 

in fact :

http://repos.archlinux.org/viewvc.cgi/gstreamer0.10-base-plugins/repos/extra-i686/

-----------------------------------------------------------

Anyway there are other bugs recently opened regarding this issue...

This seems to be the most hopeful: 
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=518082

I think the patch is present in the SVN version of gst-plugins-base, because the current version (0.10.19) has been released at the beginning of APRIL '08..

Others bugs regarding this issue still open:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478485
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478498
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478512
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=509592
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=521281

Regards
Andrea

Comment 21 Christoph Kindl 2008-06-10 12:31:48 UTC
Hi,

Ok, the problem seems to be solved when you use the volume panel to set the volume. But when I try to set the Master in gnome-volume-control, the problem is still there...

Arch Linux with Gnome 2.22.2
Comment 22 Christoph Anton Mitterer 2008-06-10 15:20:39 UTC
@Lisa Denia: I meant, that it might be possible, that if one deactivates all that stuff, the faders do simply nothing (and thus don't jump around).
Comment 23 MariusM 2008-06-26 23:12:13 UTC
Hi, I seem to have the same symptoms.
Lisa Denia's comment #15 prompted me to kill all applications that use mixer and it actually made the symptoms go away if mixer is accessed only by one application.
Systematic way to achieve it is by using fuser utility.
The following will show what applications use the mixer (control):
fuser -vi /dev/snd/control*
(you will see other users too if you do it from root terminal)
So if you kill all but one application (e.g. mixer_applet2) then you can change the volume normally with it without going bananas.
If you can replicate it, then my conclusion is that there is an unprotected  race condition over the mixer control leading to lost updates/changes and corrupt mixer readings.

I have no clue about the actual code, but could it be that the change in the mixer is propagated to all applications that listen to mixer events and then, those listening applications start polling or updating the mixer leading to a waterfall of updates and readings?

I am very annoyed by this bug.
Comment 24 stevep86 2008-07-01 16:33:50 UTC
(In reply to comment #23)

I have this problem too, running GNOME 2.22.2 on Gentoo linux.
The sound card is an ATI SB450 HDA Audio.
Linux 2.6.25-tuxonice-r5.

> Lisa Denia's comment #15 prompted me to kill all applications that use mixer
> and it actually made the symptoms go away if mixer is accessed only by one
> application.
> Systematic way to achieve it is by using fuser utility.
> The following will show what applications use the mixer (control):
> fuser -vi /dev/snd/control*
> (you will see other users too if you do it from root terminal)
> So if you kill all but one application (e.g. mixer_applet2) then you can change
> the volume normally with it without going bananas.

I did the same thing using lsof as root, but eventually i discovered that all the mixers i tried triggered a sporadic mute that lasted for a split second. 
However, it was more evident with gnome-volume-control.
This could be due to a shorter polling interval.
(The "mute LED" on my laptop combined with the *pop* from the speakers gave it away.)

I finally decided to kill all non-critical processes, leaving me only with: init, agettys, login, and bash. I then ran alsamixer and started to fiddle with the master level, and even then the mute was triggered!

So i think this might actually be an ALSA bug.
Please try to replicate.

> 
> I am very annoyed by this bug.
> 

So am i.
Comment 25 balancer 2008-10-16 20:47:29 UTC
This problem still actually in Gnome 2.24 :-/

(Gentoo, Intel HDA. In alsamixer all worked perfectly.)
Comment 26 Christoph Kindl 2008-10-18 14:22:32 UTC
Hi,

I found a patch at the archlinux bugtracker that solved the problem for me:
For further details and for the patch look at http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10380
(Comment by krims0n (krims0n) - Saturday, 30 August 2008, 10:33 GMT)
Comment 27 MariusM 2008-10-20 11:47:40 UTC
Thank you Christoph for putting this info here!
The patch worked on my laptop (dual core) and desktop (quad core).
I've put up the Debian unstable patched packages for gstreamer-plugin-base v0.10.20, just in case anyone wants a quick fix:

http://www.cs.aau.dk/~marius/gst-patched
Comment 28 balancer 2008-10-20 11:58:21 UTC
(In reply to comment #26)

> I found a patch at the archlinux bugtracker that solved the problem for me:
> For further details and for the patch look at
> http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10380

I tried this patch one month ago. Patching has successfull, but nothing helps about volume slider jumping : (

$ eix media-libs/gst-plugins-base
[I] media-libs/gst-plugins-base
     Available versions:  (0.10)  ~0.10.5[2] 0.10.14 (~)0.10.17 ~0.10.19 0.10.20 0.10.20[1]
	{X alsa debug esd nls oss xv}
     Installed versions:  0.10.20(0.10)[1](14:58:47 28.09.2008)(nls -debug)
     Homepage:            http://gstreamer.net/
     Description:         Basepack of plugins for gstreamer

[1] "local" /usr/local/portage
Comment 29 MariusM 2008-10-20 12:15:41 UTC
Just for the record:

laptop (Dell Latitude D630 on Linux 2.6.26.6) has this audio:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Dell Device 01f9
        Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
        Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel


desktop (Dell XPS 420 on Linux 2.6.27.2) has this audio:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Dell Device 0215
        Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
        Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RV635 Audio device [Radeon HD 3600 Se
ries]
        Subsystem: Dell Device aa20
        Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
        Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

both systems had problems and now with patched gstreamer I can change the volume level with confidence.

BTW I don't use "model" parameter for snd-hda-intel -- it determines and configures audio devices by itself, although I thought that the drivers could be to blame.
Comment 30 Fabricio Godoy 2008-10-30 01:27:06 UTC
*** Bug 558186 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 31 Fabricio Godoy 2008-10-30 01:52:01 UTC
I can adjust volume using "alsamixer -c 0".
I've tested with sound playing, and when I increase volume the sound pause and play, but the volume is increased.
I've tested with "top" too, but none process increase cpu use.
I don't know because the sound is discontinued.

If I try adjust sound in alsamixer and the gnome-volume-control is opened, then in alsamixer the behavior is the same in gnome-volume-control alone.
Comment 33 Nelson 2009-01-17 00:51:05 UTC
I've had this problem for a long time, but not today:

I prevented the coldplug of the alsa modules in udev and loaded the modules using gentoo's init script "alsasound". 

This was the only way the settings in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa were applied, before udev just loaded cards randomly and ignored this file.

As a collateral effect, I no longer have the faders jumping around. Hope it helps to figure out the exact problem.
Comment 34 Nelson 2009-01-23 22:15:52 UTC
Never mind, after a few reboots the problem returned, sorry! Also just switched to Ubuntu 8.10 from Gentoo and the same happens.
Comment 35 Nelson 2009-01-25 12:22:28 UTC
OK, xt.knight identified the source of this in bug #545932 : http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=545932

His patch worked for me: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gst-plugins-base0.10/+bug/252237

See also: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gstreamer/+bug/126333

Please mark as DUPLICATE
Comment 36 Christoph Anton Mitterer 2010-05-17 11:28:57 UTC
I guess this has been fixed in the meantime,.. at least I haven't noticed it again for quite some time now.
Therefore closing.