The bug here applies only when PulseAudio is involved. If I shut down pulseaudio, clear asound.conf, set all sound input/output to Autodetect or ALSA in the Devices tab of gnome-sound-properties, and "sudo eselect set esd 1" (so that ESound original is set) then this works. The problem is primarily that gnome-sound-properties crashes if it tries to load a long or strangely encoded WAV file into PulseAudio. It's not really PulseAudio's fault (as far as I can tell) because paplay works but gnome-sound-properties doesn't. No one can really say what the problem is exactly, unfortunately (some say it's a big file, others say it's length, others say it's gotta be 16-bit). Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Download the Borealis sound theme, and extract the ZIP. Forget installing it, it works fine from its own folder. (http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=12584) 2. Kill any esd instances. Make sure pulseaudio is set up to work with ALSA (etc/asound.conf) and ESD (eselect esd), maybe OSS. All of this is described here for the most part: http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup 3. Start "pulseaudio -D" and ignore "setpriority(): Permission denied". 4. Open gnome-sound-properties, and make sure everything is set to Autodetect or ALSA. Click on the Sounds tab, and make sure the two top checkmark boxes (ESD and system sounds) are checked. Set Startup1_3.wav as login sound and Exit1_1.wav as logout sound, from the Borealis pack. 5. Optionally close and open gnome-sound-properties. It seems to reset some sound pipes or something for your session when you do that. 6. Try and preview either Startup1_3.wav or Exit1_1.wav. 7. Note that "paplay <soundfile>" works just fine on these files. Actual Results: There is an internal crash, and now any GNOME-specific sounds will refuse to play, including previews of any other sounds in gnome-sound-properties on the Sounds tab. Expected Results: I can hear my login and logout sounds. No GNOME sounds play as a result of this, I assume, when I log in. I have to actually go in and try and play some of the other, shorter notification bells or whistles from the Borealis pack before GNOME-specific sounds session-wide will work.
1) please provide emerge --info 2) please also tell us which versions of whatever software you're using... 3) if you're on Gnome 2.22, system sounds are in a shady state. 2.24 should be better. @Sound, since pulse is in the loop, so are you :)
Augh, duh! I always forget those details. jacob@jacob-gdesktop ~ $ emerge --info Portage 2.1.4.4 (default-linux/x86/2007.0/desktop, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.6.1-r0, 2.6.24-gentoo-r4 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.24-gentoo-r4 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz Timestamp of tree: Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:00:01 +0000 app-shells/bash: 3.2_p33 dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7, 2.1.6 dev-lang/python: 2.4.4-r13, 2.5.2-r6 dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r6 sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.11.1 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.18.1-r2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.61-r2 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r3 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.0-r4 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.26 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.23-r3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="ccache collision-protect distlocks metadata-transfer parallel-fetch sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org/" LANG="C" LINGUAS="en" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/portage/local/layman/sunrise /usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X aac acl acpi alsa arts avahi berkdb cairo cdr cli cracklib crypt cups dbus divx dri dvd dvdr dvdread eds emboss encode esd evo fam firefox fortran gdbm gif gnome gpm gstreamer gtk hal iconv ipv6 isdnlog jpeg kde kerberos ldap mad midi mikmod mmx mp3 mpeg mudflap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly ogg opengl openmp oss pam pcre pdf perl png pppd pulseaudio python qt3 qt3support qt4 quicktime readline reflection samba sdl session spell spl sse sse2 ssl svg tcpd theora tiff truetype unicode vorbis win32codecs x86 xml xorg xv xvid zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias auth_digest" ELIBC="glibc" FOO2ZJS_DEVICES="km2430" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="i810" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS jacob@jacob-gdesktop ~ $ gnome-sound-properties --version GNOME gnome-sound-properties 2.22.2.1 jacob@jacob-gdesktop ~ $ pulseaudio --version pulseaudio 0.9.9 jacob@jacob-gdesktop ~ $ esd --version pulseaudio esd wrapper 0.9.9 jacob@jacob-gdesktop ~ $ sudo eselect esd set 1 jacob@jacob-gdesktop ~ $ esd --version Esound version 0.2.38 jacob@jacob-gdesktop ~ $ alsamixer -help # all alsa-related files report the same version as the ALSA system. eix agrees. AlsaMixer v1.0.16 <...snip...> I am on GNOME v2.22.XX, so that might be the reason. I would like to test this for myself if possible.
This is a quite old bug with no activity. The latest pulseaudio in portage is >=0.9.15, please test with something current and reopen if it's still a problem.
Indeed, the latest GNOME v2.24 handles sounds in a much better way. I'd mark this bug as fixed.
