Bug 88806 – alsaconf kills KDE's kicker, if "Sound Mixer" applet was ever installed

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED UPSTREAM

[Description Prof. Jonathan King 2005-04-11 20:41:06 UTC]

Running KDE, suppose you install the "Sound Mixer" applet
into KDE's `kicker'.  Running `alsaconf' will kill kicker, even
if you first remove the applet.  However, if the applet was
never installed into `kicker', then running `alsaconf' spares `kicker'.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Run KDE.
2. With ptr on kicker, rclick -> Add -> Applet -> Sound Mixer.
3. In a root shell, run `alsaconf' ...and stand back... .

Actual Results:  
Kicker disappears; the `ps' cmd shows that
it is gone.

[Comment 1 Andrea Barisani (RETIRED) 2005-04-11 23:39:27 UTC]

This is not a tenshi bug. Please double-check the component when creating new
bugs. Reassigning to bug-wranglers. Thx

[Comment 2 Prof. Jonathan King 2005-04-12 05:04:10 UTC]

Right you are.  I realized my error soon after posting the bug
and tried to use the "Reassign bug" line, but could not get it
to work for me.  I'm sorry about my slip.

[Comment 3 Gregorio Guidi (RETIRED) 2005-04-12 05:56:52 UTC]

kicker dies because alsaconf runs "/etc/init.d/alsasound stop" which in turn runs a command that kills all processes that opened the audio devices.

We cannot do anything for it on the kde side, reassigning to the sound herd to see what they can do about this behavior of alsaconf.

[Comment 4 Jeremy Huddleston (RETIRED) 2005-04-21 02:47:11 UTC]

That's the expected behavior.  Short answer is don't use alsaconf... just edit /etc/modules.d/alsa yourself

[Comment 5 Prof. Jonathan King 2005-05-04 14:07:24 UTC]

Thanks for your comments, gentlemen.
Gregorio Guidi, is the "Sound Mixer" itself a process? --why
can't just it be killed, rather than all of kicker?

Sure "Sound mixer" is running inside of kicker but,
after all, kicker is running inside of KDE, and we'd probably all
agree that it would be unreasonable for `alsaconf' to  kill KDE
if the user had, at some point, run the "Sound Mixer" applet.

By the way, it is possible that thread

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-331879.html

is seeing this same issue but in a different context.

[Comment 6 Gregorio Guidi (RETIRED) 2005-05-04 14:30:19 UTC]

> is the "Sound Mixer" itself a process? --why
> can't just it be killed, rather than all of kicker?

it's not a separate process, it's loaded by the kicker process itself.

[Comment 7 Jeremy Huddleston (RETIRED) 2005-05-05 11:04:01 UTC]

Well then that's a bad design decision on the part of kde...