FFADO 2.4.4 only runs properly with sudo

[Pander]

Starting FFADO 2.4.4 from the menu does not list a device and reports in the GUI the following error:

Somehow the connection to the dbus-service of FFADE couldn't be established.

and had the log message:

logginghandler: Could not communicate with the FFADO DBus service...

When starting FFADO from the command line with

sudo ffado-mixer-qt4

no error is reported and the sound device is listed and usable.

Please, fix that the default/normal user that can change sound settings can also use FFADO directly when launching it from the menu.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Pander (pander)]

Additional info on the command line, the following is reported:

1619713883173212: (ffado-dbus-server.cpp)[ 275] main: Discovering devices...
1619713883174750: Fatal (devicemanager.cpp)[ 187] initialize: No firewire adapters (ports) found.
1619713883174767: Error (ffado-dbus-server.cpp)[ 282] main: Could not initialize device manager
1619713883174774: Debug (ffado-dbus-server.cpp)[ 207] exitfunction: Debug output flushed...
no message buffer overruns
18:31:28 logginghandler ERROR Could not communicate with the FFADO DBus service...
PanelManager.__del__()
Exception ignored in: <function PanelManager.__del__ at 0x7fc9472a2790>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/ffado-mixer-qt4/ffado/panelmanager.py", line 119, in __del__
    self.polltimer.stop()
RuntimeError: wrapped C/C++ object of type PanelManager has been deleted

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Debian/Bugs. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.

[Pander (pander)]

As requested by a maintainer of FFADE, the output of the diagnose tool. This is most likely to do with device rights for the user or group.

UPDATE: When I looked at the output of the diagnose tool, I see two Firewire devices with different user/group rights. (The card in the desktop has actually three places to add a FireWire cable, not two.) When I plug in on the left connector, this user rights issue occurs. But when I plug it into the middle, the issue is gone.

So this might nog be an issue for FFADO. I have another desktop with FireWire and a DV camera. I notived also that the port I use there has influence in how I can connect to the camera. Will test this later on and add the findings here. Perhaps there is a convention or default config to offer FireWire #0 only for root and #1 also for group audio?

obs@obs:~$ ffado-diag
FFADO diagnostic utility 2.4.4

(C) 2008 Pieter Palmers
    2009-2010 Arnold Krille
    2018 Nicolas Boulenguez, Jonathan Woithe

gcc /usr/bin/gcc
                          gcc (Ubuntu 10.3.0-1ubuntu1) 10.3.0
g++ /usr/bin/g++
                          g++ (Ubuntu 10.3.0-1ubuntu1) 10.3.0
pyuic4 None
pyuic5 None
jackd None
pkg-config /usr/bin/pkg-config
jack 1.9.17
                          -ljack
libraw1394 2.1.2
                          -lraw1394
libavc1394 not found
libiec61883 not found
libxml++-2.6 not found
dbus-1 1.12.20
                          -I/usr/include/dbus-1.0 -I/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dbus-1.0/include -ldbus-1

Build time info /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libffado/static_info.txt
  gcc /usr/bin/gcc
                            gcc (Ubuntu 10.2.1-6ubuntu2) 10.2.1 20210121
  g++ /usr/bin/g++
                            g++ (Ubuntu 10.2.1-6ubuntu2) 10.2.1 20210121
  pyuic4 None
  pyuic5 /usr/bin/pyuic5
                            Python User Interface Compiler 5.15.2 for Qt version 5.15.2
  jackd None
  pkg-config /usr/bin/pkg-config
  jack not found
  libraw1394 2.1.2
                            -lraw1394
  libavc1394 not found
  libiec61883 1.2.0
                            -liec61883 -lraw1394
  libxml++-2.6 2.40.1
                            -I/usr/include/libxml++-2.6 -I/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxml++-2.6/include -I/usr/include/libxml2 -I/usr/include/glibmm-2.4 -I/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/glibmm-2.4/include -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/sigc++-2.0 -I/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sigc++-2.0/include -lxml++-2.6 -lxml2 -lglibmm-2.4 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 -lsigc-2.0
  dbus-1 1.12.20
                            -I/usr/include/dbus-1.0 -I/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dbus-1.0/include -ldbus-1

kernel version 5.11.0-7614-generic
Preempt (low latency) False
RT patched False
/dev/fw* ...

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Pander, I don't know why you refuse to report these bugs to Debian. It's a Debain-imported package and no Ubuntu developer has touched it. The way it works is that Ubuntu syncs packages from Debian during the development cycle. Unless you see a "-xUbuntux" in the package name, it's a Debian package. PLEASE report this bug to Debian. Thank you.

[Pander (pander)]

No refusal, just that I got this information meanwhile from FFADO maintainer (before I got around reporting it at Debian) and it solved it for me. So I shared that it here because perhaps it is not a bug at all.

I have also been relaying feedback from the FFADO maintainer on issues reported at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libffado as he doesn't have an account at Launchpad. This might close a lot of those bugs.