audacity not working in Ubuntu 11.04 (natty)

[Bernd Dietzel]

Binary package hint: audacity

Audacity Version : 1.13.12-14ubuntu1
Ubuntu Version : Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal Alpha3 , 64bit

When Audacity starts the CPU usage raises high, even when not audio file has been opened yet.

Then, when you try to open a audio file like a wave file ... nothing happens at all, no wave file shown in audacity.

When you press CTRL+N a new Audacity Window opens and then when you try to open the same wave file in this new audacity window you may have luck and it works now.
Sometime again nothing happens - and you have to do this a third time to get the file loaded.

The very first audacity window is hard to close, you have to do "killall audacity" in a terminal.

Please check if its a audacity problem or has something to do with the new Ubuntu 11.04 (Xorg, X11, python 2.7... ?)
Thanks!

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: audacity 1.3.12-14ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-5.32-generic 2.6.38-rc6
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-5-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Mar 8 17:42:35 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha amd64 (20110301.7)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=de_DE:en
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: audacity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

This is related to Unity. Without Unity (login with Classic Desktop) every works fine.

[Marcos Magalhães (marcos-daekdroom)]

In Classic Desktop, it also happens if you use indicator-appmenu applet.

[Doug McMahon (mc3man)]

Being duped to this - this is related somehow to audacity using the global menu.
If you wish to use pending a fix then return audacity's menus back to audacity's window.

[Jorge Suárez de Lis (ys)]

It also happens with the global menu on KDE. So, it's a bug related to every implementation of global menus.

On unity, killing unity-panel-service restores Audacity. The process spawns again, so a quick fix for when Audacity hangs is to press Alt+f2 (latest builds only) and enter:

  killall unity-panel-service

Every time Audacity hangs, of course.

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

I can confirm this only happens when using global menu, as have others.

[Doug McMahon (mc3man)]

Because this has been hanging about for a bit -
if you want to return the menus to audacity as a user then open the audacity.desktop
gksudo gedit /usr/share/applications/audacity.desktop

Then adjust the Exec=audacity line to this
Exec=env UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 audacity

(note there is a space between env and UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 and a space between UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 and audacity

This will return menus when opening audacity from app menu and from r. click context menu

[Jorge Suárez de Lis (ys)]

If Ubuntu is not going to fix this on Audacity for 11.04 release, changing the audacity.desktop as suggested by Doug McMahon should be a good-enough workaround for now.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

seems similar to bug #722375