Clementine and Exaile are crashing when trying to play aac (.m4a) files

[Saverio Miroddi]

As subject. In the console, a "stack smashing" error is displayed. I can reproduce with many aac files, and it's related to gstreamer-plugins-bad, which is used for decoding of such files.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10
Package: gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad 0.10.23-8.1ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.2.0-16.19-generic 4.2.3
Uname: Linux 4.2.0-16-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zcommon znvpair zavl nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.19.1-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Nov 2 18:17:08 2015
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-10-30 (2 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 15.10 "Wily Werewolf" - Release amd64 (20151021)
SourcePackage: gst-plugins-bad0.10
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Zachary Larsen (chiefmanyrabbitguteat)]

Also affected by this bug. Other players (rhythmbox, etc.) play M4A just fine. Clementine plays all other audio files just fine, but always crashes when it encounters aac files.

Also on Xubuntu 15.10, fresh install. Stack smashing error reported when Clementine started from terminal.

[Saikrishna Arcot (saiarcot895)]

Stack trace of the relevant section:

#0 __stack_chk_fail () at stack_chk_fail.c:28
No locals.
#1 0x00007fffb81391c2 in gst_faad_set_format (dec=0x7fff88006840, caps=<optimized out>)
    at gstfaad.c:392
        faad = 0x7fff88006840
        str = 0x7fffbc072ac0
        buf = <optimized out>
        value = <optimized out>
        __func__ = "gst_faad_set_format"
        __FUNCTION__ = "gst_faad_set_format"
#2 0x00007fffd649a4eb in gst_audio_decoder_sink_setcaps (pad=0x1, caps=0x7fff88001800)
    at gstaudiodecoder.c:546
        dec = 0x7fff88006840
        klass = 0x7fff88005c00
        res = 1
        __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ = "gst_audio_decoder_sink_setcaps"
#3 0x00007fffdc42bdff in gst_pad_set_caps ()
   from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
No symbol table info available.

The error is likely somewhere in the gst_faad_set_format() method.

[Simon (sur3)]

Same Problem with Exaile depending on gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad in Wily Werewolf..
When trying to play .m4a-Files (AAC), Exaile crashes showing "stack smashing detected".
In Thrusty Tahr everything worked just fine, probably the now missing gstreamer-ffmpeg, could have been an alternative to gstreamer-plugins-bad, but is gone in Wily Werewolf.. :-/
This is annoying, when you upgrade your distro and your favourite player isn't working anymore with most of your music.. :-/

[Saikrishna Arcot (saiarcot895)]

Anything using libfaad.so from this package to play AAC files has this problem, so it's not restricted to Clementine and Exaile.

[Keith (livefreein603)]

I'm using Ubuntu 15.10 - Wily and Clementine Version 1.2.3

Whenever I try to play an "m4a" file, Clementine crashes and closes. I am able to play m4a file with all other music players.

A large number of my music file are in m4a format. Is there a fix or workaround available? I like Clementine and would like to continue using it but am unable to at this time.

[Zachary Larsen (chiefmanyrabbitguteat)]

 Upgrading to latest version of Clementine from the PPA below seems to have solved the issue for me. (As of writing, latest is Clementine 1.2.3-1510-g8eec786~wily)

https://launchpad.net/~me-davidsansome/+archive/ubuntu/clementine-dev

[Saverio Miroddi (64kramsystem)]

PPA of comment #8 solves the issue for me as well (Ubuntu 15.10).

[Ben Mather (brmather1)]

Yep, that PPA worked for me too.

In a terminal type:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:me-davidsansome/clementine-dev
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

.m4a files work again!

[RickB (rick-777)]

The PPA solution works for me too.