gvfs-hal-volume-monitor reporting incorrect sound state (Lenovo Thinkpad T500)

[Huygens]

Binary package hint: gvfs

On a Thinkpad T500, there are 3 buttons to control the sound volume. One mute/unmute button, one to raise the volume and one to lower it.

When using Ubuntu Jaunty alpha 4, the sound configuration was correctly reported by the Gnome volume applet. When I pressed the mute button, the sound was muted. When I pressed it again, the sound was on again at the same volume. When I increased the volume, it was putting the volume on and increasing it. etc.

Since then, there have been several updates, and I cannot tell which one broke this behaviour.
What I can tell is that the Gnome volume applet is perfectly working, every interactions I do with it as the correct "output" (mute/unmute, raise/lower the sound). So I suspect HAL to be the origin of my problem because with the latest Ubuntu Jaunty (as of 25th of March) the keyboard buttons do not work as expected.

So here is the current behaviour.
- Initial state: sound is ON, volume around 70%
- Pressing the mute button: sound is OFF but Gnome volume applet does not reflect that. This is the expected behaviour, but the neither the Notification nor Gnome vol applet reflect the change.
- Pressing the mute button again: sound remain OFF, Gnome volume applet is still showing the same state as before. No notification.
- Pressing the raise vol button: sound becomes ON and volume about 10%. Gnome volume applet reflect correctly this state. The notification is displayed showing the volume level. However, the expected behaviour would have been sound ON and volume at 70% or 80%.
- Pressing the lower vol button: sound becomes OFF and volume 0%. Gnome volume applet reflect correctly this and the notification also.
- Pressing the mute button: sound remains OFF, no display of notification no change in Gnome vol. applet.
Using Gnome vol applet to unmute the sound and put the sound volume to 70%: correct behaviour/output.
- Pressing the mute button: sound is OFF, but Gnome volume applet does not reflect that. This is the expected behaviour, but the neither the Notification nor Gnome vol applet reflect the change.
- Pressing the lower volume button: sound remain OFF. Gnome volume applet can show that the sound is lower but not that it is off. The notification shows that the sound is off but that the volume is 60% (see attached screenshot)
- Pressing the raise volume button: sound is ON. Gnome volume applet shows correct information so does the notification too.

I say it again, but this was working properly with Jaunty alpha 4... there has been a regression at some points.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: gvfs 1.2.0-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gvfs
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic x86_64

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

gvfs has nothing to do with keyboard actions nor sound

[Huygens (huygens-25)]

Thank you for the information.
But would you know which component is faulty then? As far as I can tell, this isn't Gnome volume applet.

[Huygens (huygens-25)]

I am trying to figure out which package has the problem... If you know the right package, please point it out to me...

[Huygens (huygens-25)]

I have been trying to find out which package or packages might be at the root of the cause.
There is potentially hal (e.g. file /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop/30-keymap-module-thinkpad-acpi.fdi which sets up hotkeys to configure the volume), and gnome-applets.
Possibly this could be the integration of gnome-applets with hal which is buggy on Thinkpad laptops...

I was trying to get debug info from hal, but the man pahe of hald talks about a hal-debuginfo package which is not in the Ubuntu's repositories...

[Huygens (huygens-25)]

I have tried to stop hald and start it manually using the following commands:
sudo /etc/init.d/hal stop
sudo pkill hald
sudo hald --daemon=no --verbose=yes

The terminal got flooded with messages before settling down. I then used the 3 buttons present on the Thinkpad to control the volume. When I press the raise or lower volume button, a message like the one below appears. However, when I press the mute button, nothing is displayed on the terminal!

21:37:13.702 [D] hald_dbus.c:3197: udi=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_i8042_i8042_KBD_port_logicaldev_input