Firefox/flash fights over audio device with other apps (and finally looses)

[Joakim Larsson]

Binary package hint: rhythmbox

To reproduce:

- Install Dapper Drake 6.06 x86 (well whatever, might not be needed)
- Install Gstreamer pacjages for MP3 etc
- Startup http://youtube.com/
- Click on the webpage to auto install the needed flashplugin for the youtube videos (flash 7)
- Start to watch a lengthy video
- In the meantime double click on an MP3 file on the desktop so it starts to play

[There is NO audio from the MP3!]

- Load another page in firefox without flash content

[There IS now audio from the MP3!]

- Go back to youtube.com and start the video again

[There is NO audio from the video]

- Quit the MP3 player

[There is still NO audio from the video]

So this is the bug, Firefox/flash never recovers from this state and needs to be restarted. Problem is that people doesn't realize the cause and thinks something is really broken. I changed the audio card and almost reinstalled Ubuntu before I realized that it was reproduzable and not a random error.

I don't know what software part to blame but audio apps should be able to cope with each other.

[Jason Ribeiro (jrib)]

Thanks for the bug report.

This is a bug with flash. Flash version 7 uses oss by default which won't let multiple applications use the sound card. Since flash is closed source, it can't really be fixed, but the work around has been to run firefox through 'aoss' as described in the trouble shooting section for flash in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats .

However, adobe has released a beta of flash 9 for linux at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/ which now uses alsa. Can you try this and see if it resolves your issues?

[Joakim Larsson (joakim-bildrulle)]

Yes it works, thanks! I installed it by copying the libflashplugin.so to my plugin catalog and restarted firefox. I am now able to play MP3:s and youtube.com videos simultaneosly! :-)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for flashplugin-nonfree (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]