I've had to revert once again to gnome-media 2.4.1.1 since it's the latest version I can install which as a usable gnome-volume-control and mixer. With newer versions (e.g. v2.6.0 -> v2.6.2) gnome-volume-control fails when bringing up the full mixer, with the error "Sorry, no mixer elements or devices found" and the volume slider won't hold a position. This is apparently a gstreamer error. Gnome-media v2.4.1.1 depends on and re-installs gstreamer (and gst-* plugins) 0.6.4, which causes Nautilus to crash on audio file mouseover previews, but the volume control is more important than this here so I'll once again have to put up with audio previews not working, I also have the gst v0.8.2 packages installed but to no avial. $ qpkg -I -nc -v gst media-libs/gstreamer-0.6.4 media-libs/gst-plugins-0.6.4 media-libs/gst-plugins-0.8.2 media-libs/gstreamer-0.8.3-r1 media-plugins/gst-plugins-ogg-0.8.2 media-plugins/gst-plugins-oss-0.8.2 media-plugins/gst-plugins-esd-0.8.2 media-plugins/gst-plugins-vorbis-0.6.4 media-plugins/gst-plugins-vorbis-0.8.2 media-plugins/gst-plugins-alsa-0.8.2-r1 media-plugins/gst-plugins-gnomevfs-0.8.2 media-plugins/gst-plugins-mad-0.6.4 media-plugins/gst-plugins-mad-0.8.2 media-plugins/gst-plugins-lame-0.8.2 Any suggestions on how to work around this? $ emerge info Portage 2.0.50-r10 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.3.4, glibc-2.3.3.20040420-r1, 2.4.20-gentoo-r9) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.20-gentoo-r9 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.60GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16 ccache version 2.3 [enabled] Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r4 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.5-r1 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=pentium4 -march=pentium4 -fprefetch-loop-arrays -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=pentium4 -march=pentium4 -fprefetch-loop-arrays -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://gentoo.noved.org/ http://gentoo.noved.org/ ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/linux/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j3" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X Xaw3d acl acpi alsa apache2 apm arts avi berkdb bindist bonobo cdr crypt cups curl doc dvd dvdr encode esd evo fastcgi flash foomaticdb gdbm gif gnome gpm gps gstreamer gtk gtk2 gtkhtml guile imap imlib ipv6 java jikes jpeg libg++ libwww mad maildir mcal mikmod motif mozilla mpeg mysql nas ncurses nls oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl plotutils png ppds python quicktime readline samba sasl scanner sdl slang slp snmp spell sse ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex tiff truetype usb x86 xml xml2 xmms xosd xv zeo zlib"
A couple of corrections: After much Microsoft-style RRR I've once again got Nautilus previews working, which appears to be an issue with the gst-* v0.6.4 drivers being present on the system at all. I uninstalled them, rebuilt a variety of packages (some of them several times) interspersed with gnome restarts and I'm back to square one, however I still can't advance gnome-media above v2.4.1.1. The exact error I get with higher versions of gnome-media is slightly different from the one reported previously: "Sorry, no mixer elements and/or devices found" This exact phrase shows up on google in code labeled "gst-mixer" however there's no such plugin, at least not in gentoo. There are lots of reports out there about this problem (e.g. <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-gnome-maintainers/2004-June/004796.html>) but I haven't found much that makes much sense in the way of solutions. Looks like a gstreamer problem.
sorry, but you mess around in weird ways too much, up/downgrading is bound to give problems like that. If you rebuild this and that, downgrade the other stuff you are willingly creating all sorts of possibilities for imbalance. I have no way of saying where your problem comes from right now and why it hits you all the time. You should be able to have a mixer just fine in 2.6, you have 2 elements that expose a mixer to gnome. It should work.
foser, look, I had multiple versions of gst installed on the system through no explicit action of my own except carefully and regularly upgrading gentoo as conserviatively as possible. The versions are slotted. It took a bunch of work, over a couple of months, to solve the problem with nautilus and gst-plugins-gnomevfs which was apparently causing audio previews to fail. You were the one who recommeded that I re-emerge my gst stuff. Now I run emerge sync and emerge -uUp world again, and voila! No mixer! I try to avoid messing with versions and back-versioning as much as anyone. If I leave the beaten path then this becomes a support problem, not a bug. But I work with music professionally and a convenient, working mixer is essential to my audio work on this box. If gentoo dependencies and integration were tight enough, then there shouldn't be a problem with back-versioning a component that's broken to get to one that works. You should note that I din't back-version gnome-media _until_ I had a problem with gnome-volume-control. gnome-media 2.4.1.1 depends on gstreamer and gst plugins 0.6.4, and installs them with the ebuild. I let this happen, since the versions are slotted, and gstreamer and gst-plugins 0.8.2 remained on the system. Apparenty this wasn't OK. So please, let's look at this as a version integration and dependency issue, and lets address it as a technical problem, _probably_ a gentoo bug. It doesn't solve anything to tell me that it's my fault because I 'mess around in weird ways' because I have to have an audio subsystem on this box that works. Believe me, I'd much rather have my system current than be locked into an old version. For what it's worth, gnome alsa-mixer works fine, and provides an acceptable substitute for the gnome-volume-control, probably a better one at that since it expresses more of the alsa interface to the card. The gnome-volume-control mixer is very convenient, and I'm used to it, and having it not working is more of an annoyance than an obstacle. I report the problem here as much anything as a service to the gentoo dev community. I'm a real-world guy doing real-world work on this box, doing what I have to to make it work. It's not a dev-toy for me. That, at least, should be significant to you and other gentoo devs. Now let's move on and see if we can address the gnome-volume-control issue. I'm willing to try whatever is suggested to solve the problem.
There are known problems with portage and strict deps & thats not something thats going to be solved anytime soon. It's pretty much outside the scope of this bug. Besides that there is no way to tell in advance when downgrade problems are going to appear, gnome is forwards API stable, not backwards. We cannot take into account going the other way around it, no distro will. You describe several problems which probably come from that fact alone, while your intial problem only is that gnome-volume-control for some reason can't find any mixer elements. Anyway, if you run 'gnome-volume-control' from a terminal, does it give any indications as to why it can't find a mixer ?
> There are known problems with portage and strict deps & thats not something > thats going to be solved anytime soon I understand this, and can certainly work within this framework, even if it involves removing and reinstalling entire subsystems in a prescribed order in order to untangle the dependencies and relationships. Running gnome-volume-control from a terminal produced the same results as running it from the panel applet. Since I have a working alsa-mixer I'll be happy to re-install gnome-media 2.6 and bang on it if it would help. In fact, since I'm reporting this as a bug then I'm pretty well obligated to do so :-) I did have this same problem some months ago and locked gnome-media down at 2.4.1.1 in package.mask, and I think I filed a bug on it somewhere, but I recall that the problem was resolved at some point and the version limitation was commented out in my package.mask. As I noted, a google search shows that others have had this problem, too. As I noted, I'm now at current versions of gstreamer and gst-plugins and all the gst 0.6.4 stuff is off the system. Nautilus audio previews work fine. gnome-volume-control 2.4.1.1 works. I have to move on with other work today, but will re-emerge gnome-media at the current version and if it still fails, we can take it from there. Sorry if my initial report was a bit bitchy in tone! I had spent the day struggling with an unrelated programming project and was tired and short on patience.
gnome-volume-control >=2.6 output is what i'm interested in, 2.4 uses a non-gstreamer way of mixing. There have been reports of the control not working, but thats due to no mixer element being installed and should not happen on most systems. If the gst-plugins list in your initial comment is still valid, then there should be mixer elements available.
I re-installed gnome-media-0.8.2 and guess what??! gnome-volume-control now works. Sometimes Murphy's Law is our friend! I get 4 tabs in the full mixer, 2 for the alsa-mixers for each of 2 cards I have installed, and 2 for OSS mixers, which are also installed. I definitely confirmed this problem (several times!) for every version of gnome-media above v2.4.1.1 on Saturday. By way of review, hoping this may help if the problem crops up again somewhere, here's some (possibly relevant) information: $ qpkg -I -nc -v gst media-libs/gst-plugins-0.8.2 media-libs/gstreamer-0.8.3-r1 media-plugins/gst-plugins-ogg-0.8.2 media-plugins/gst-plugins-oss-0.8.2 media-plugins/gst-plugins-esd-0.8.2 media-plugins/gst-plugins-vorbis-0.8.2 media-plugins/gst-plugins-alsa-0.8.2-r1 media-plugins/gst-plugins-gnomevfs-0.8.2 media-plugins/gst-plugins-mad-0.8.2 media-plugins/gst-plugins-lame-0.8.2 This was the same installed ebuild list I had when the problem originally presented, so no change here except that I removed and reinstalled _all_ the gst ebuilds after updating the alsa drivers. I had held these back in package.mask since the dual-channel output from my primary audio card (CS46xx) was dropped in an alsa upgrade, but was later restored, and I hadn't yet upgraded. This shouldn't have caused the problem. There's merit in the classic Microsoft 3R's tech support solution, althoug with Linux the 2nd R is generally "restart" rather than "reboot". A _had_ done some 'weird' messing around with versions in trying to solve another problem (Bug #51787) which perhaps got things out of sync. Again, please accept my humble apologies for my somewhat less than objective original post on this bug. Gentoo developers are obviously busy, do an absolutely superb job, are generally friendly and helpful and deserve the highest level of objective analysis and careful reporting from those of us who report bugs. Although this wasn't the case here, I do have the satisfaction of knowing that I have close to 90% hit rate in distinguishing support issues (which I address to the gentoo users lists and forum) from genuine bugs, which I report here. Ciao, and may you all have a productive and satisfying day....
