I found in ~user/.cache/gdm/session.log on all of my systems. There was discussion to a similar issue for Red Hat at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=538617 almost two years ago and for OpenSUSE at http://linux.bigresource.com/OpenSUSE-Login-sound-libcanberra-not-working-ZtvvMrYtm.html almost three years ago. At http://gnomeshell.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/manage-the-startup-applications/ I find : GNOME Login Sound Play a sound from the sound theme after the login to welcome the user. This is broken since years, I’ve checked in Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian and Arch Linux, don’t know why but every default sound theme seems to miss the required file. Command: /usr/bin/canberra-gtk-play --id=”desktop-login” Status: unwanted until you fix the default theme and wish to hear a welcome sound. What means 'unwanted'? Even if I do not want to hear a welcome sound, I don't like to have error messages in .cache/gdm/session.log It looks for me that the reason for the issue wants to play /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/desktop-login.oga which is not present. There is only /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/service-login.oga. BTW., the Homepage for x11-themes/sound-theme-freedesktop http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/sound-theme-spec does not exist.
I just change the "GNOME Login Sound" settings with gnome-session-properties from /usr/bin/canberra-gtk-play --id="desktop-login" --description="GNOME Login" to /usr/bin/canberra-gtk-play --id="service-login" --description="GNOME Login" . The error message "Failed to play sound: File or data not found" in ~user/.cache/gdm/session.log disappeared now, but nevertheless I can't here any Login Sound.
You can/should disable this from your user session launching gnome-session-properties for example. From a distribution POV, we have to leave these files as they can be used by any spec compliant theme. The fact that we don't provide any such sound theme is irrelevant since you could easily write an ebuild for one you did yourself or for one of another distribution. After installing it, everything would just work while you would have to reinstall the package just to get the .desktop if we did otherwise. I know this does not sound sexy, but this is the only way we have.
