[Jaunty] Volume keys causing an endless loop with pulseaudio

[TenLeftFingers]

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

When I press the Volume Up button on my keyboard, the volume shoots all the way up to the maximum. And the notification for the volume re-displays itself perpetually.

Similary, when I press the Volume Down button, the volume drops to zero and again, the notifications constantly re-display the 'Mute' sign.

If I adjust the volumes on the gnome-panel there is no problem. Only when I use keyboard shortcuts.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue that you reported is one that should be reproducible with the live environment of the Desktop CD of the development release the Karmic Koala. It would help us greatly if you could test with it so we can work on getting it fixed in the next release of Ubuntu. You can find out more about the development release at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ . Thanks again and we appreciate your help.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

[TenLeftFingers (tenleftfingers)]

I can confirm this behavior on the Karmic Final release (9.10). Further, this behavior actually makes the Applications menu (including Places & System) inaccessible after reproducing.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

This appears to be a linux bug, not a pulseaudio one. Disable PA
autospawn, kill PA, then use the volume keys.

[TenLeftFingers (tenleftfingers)]

I disabled autospawn in /etc/pulse/client.conf and killed pulseaudio.

Repeating the steps caused the same behavior. I still loose access to the gui.

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

Is this issue still reproduceable with either Ubuntu karmic 9.10 with latest updates installed, or Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 alpha 3?

[TenLeftFingers (tenleftfingers)]

It's still reproducible on 9.10, which is fully updated. I'm downloading Lucid A3 now and I'll report back tomorrow.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

This is unlikely to be a pulse bug; see gnome-settings-daemon

[TenLeftFingers (tenleftfingers)]

Killing the gnome-settings-daemon gave me back control of the desktop. Should I change the package based on that?

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 10:23 AM, Jarlath <email address hidden> wrote:
> Killing the gnome-settings-daemon gave me back control of the desktop.
> Should I change the package based on that?

Yes.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

This isn't like to be a gnome-settings-daemon issue. It's more likely that your volume keys aren't producing a key release event. Could you stop gnome-settings-daemon, run "xev" and tell me if you see a key release event when you press the volume key?

[TenLeftFingers (tenleftfingers)]

When I killed gnome-settings-daemon, the volume Fn keys don't work (although the screen brightness +/- did). I tried xev to be sure, and the volume Fn keys didn't register with that either.

I restarted the computer and tried xev with gnome-settings-daemon left running. Xev detected a 'grab' event for the volume Fn keys, but didn't detect an 'ungrab' event. As per the bug report, this action led to the same problem.

After another reboot, I ran xev and used the screen brightness +/- keys. Xev detected both a 'grab' event and an 'ungrab' event.

[TenLeftFingers (tenleftfingers)]

I think the results of the xev test suggest that my computer keyboard was to blame. If someone agrees with that then I can make this bug invalid.

[J.D. (fungs)]

This is just a hint but it could solve many of the related bugs here, it only applies to keyboards normally known to work correctly with hotkeys:

I had the same problems here under Karmic (after some system changes) and it came back under Lucid after I thought it was corrected by the upgrade. Strange thing is: this happend with the multimedia special keys only but with a normal "Cherry XPress" usb keyboard (which always happend to work nicely before. Using "showkey" on the console showed that none of these keys were released and concordingly the volume control and other hotkey functions were repeated forever. It gave me some headaches until I decided to unplug and reconnect the keyboard to another usb port where it worked nicely again.

I guess since notebook keyboards are connected via USB and FN special keys work like mine this could be the reason for many of these bugs. So if a physical disconnect is possible, try it and start the computer again with usb disconnected. Then reattach the keyboard and see what happens. Maybe unloading the usb hid modules has the same effect but for me the error persisted over several reboots.

[John Doe (john.doe82)]

I just got the same issue with my upgraded box (from 9.10 to 10.04): When pressing the volume keys on my Cherry Stream keyboard, CPU consumes 100% and I'm not able to input anything anymore. Mouse control works however. If I switch over to tty1 and back to X with CTRL+ALT+F1 the keyboard works again and CPU is back to normal.

On 9.10 this all worked without problems! Please advise for how to debug this problem further. Thanks!

[John Doe (john.doe82)]

Some updated magically cured my system: Now the volume/mute keys all work as they did in 9.10. Thanks to the one who bugfixes this!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-settings-daemon (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]