Comment 15 for bug 125308

evince is hanging for me in the same sort of way. I'm running hardy-proposed, with pulse audio etc. no "esd" process is running.
The only "esd" string in dpkg -l is libesd-alsa0.

$ strace evince file.pdf
....
socket(PF_FILE, SOCK_STREAM, 0) = 16
fcntl(16, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0
setsockopt(16, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, [1], 4) = 0
connect(16, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path="/tmp/.esd-6265/socket"}, 23) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, {0x7f4d176fa5d0, [PIPE], SA_RESTORER|SA_RESTART, 0x7f4d19e8e100}, {SIG_IGN}, 8) = 0
open("/home/neal/.esd_auth", O_RDONLY) = 17
read(17, "\271t k\336\267j\1771\274\'V\25\2151\335", 16) = 16
write(16, "\271t k\336\267j\1771\274\'V\25\2151\335", 16) = 16
write(16, "NDNE", 4) = 4
read(16,

[hang]

I've had recent possibly-related hangs with gthumb, gnome panel etc.

This could be related to recently starting using padevchooser and e.g. enabling network access.