gcompris freezes

[Emmanuel Touzery]

Binary package hint: gcompris

In ubuntu 8.10 the game "computer/mouse/erase" freezes for me.
I'm using compiz, gcompris in full screen 800x600.

Playing this game it freezes relatively often: the GUI turns gray (probably the compiz action for inactive windows). The mouse is still colored and still moves. X is still responding (cube switching and all).
I can switch to text terminal (ctrl alt f1) and killall gcompris and all is OK (except i'm in 800x600).

I configured it to have french audio and text.

Running it from command line I see this line in the text output but I'm not sure whether it's related to the problem:

(gcompris:12941): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_thread_join: assertion `thread' failed

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

More info: also sound stops working when it freezes.

I ran gcompris in command-line with "-D" (debug). I'm attaching the end of the log (i didn't redirect the output and the gnome terminal only displays the latest lines).

maybe it's connected with pulseaudio... who knows.

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

I can reproduce the problem pretty easily so you can ask me to test things if you want.

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

well I suspected pulseaudio so I made a run without sound.

gcompris -m

No freeze when I run it without sound. I can reach level 3 of that game while with sound it's impossible, it always freezes before that.

So it's related to the sound.

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

NB: about -m:

 -m, --mute run GCompris without sound.

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

pasuspender gcompris
=> freezes still

killlall pulseaudio; gcompris
=> micro-freezes all the time: the application is very annoying to use, very often "pauses" but then recovers. In the end, freezes anyway

So the only workaround that I have for now is running without sound.

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

I sent a mail on the gcompris-devel mailing list on the topic.

Links:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=49B61293.9010609%40free.fr&forum_name=gcompris-devel

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=49B6BA11.8060101%40free.fr&forum_name=gcompris-devel

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=1236720799.9709.55.camel%40bruno&forum_name=gcompris-devel

Basically Bruno Coudoin asked me to try without using compiz, and I could confirm that the freeze also occurs when not using compiz, so compiz is not the source of the problem.

When this was established, he said

"OK, then go complain at your distro. This is probably an audio driver
issue. I am afraid there is nothing we can do."

Based on this information I'm not sure whether it makes sense to keep the bug assigned to gcompris. Maybe I should assign it also to pulseaudio or ALSA.

[Arto Huotari (roskapostiaminulle)]

I have the exact same problem except I have HP550 laptop with intel audio.
So far everything else in Gcompris has worked fine. If this is audio driver related
problem, then why the problem manifests it self in one particular game of the Gcompris?

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

Aerto, so it also fixes you for you as well if you run it mute?

My sound card is definitely not intel, i have an AMD desktop computer.
Here's the motherboard:
http://www.asus.com/Product.aspx?P_ID=YcXfRrWHZ9RKoVmw

It's probably VIA.

It might cause a problem here because I think the game plays a sound everytime you remove a tile and because it happens very often it plays lots of sounds quickly and that may work out the sound system (but what -driver, pulseaudio, gcompris code, who knows).

[Arto Huotari (roskapostiaminulle)]

I tested up to level 3 with out sound(Option -m). GCompris did not freeze.

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

well i upgraded to jaunty (9.04) and now i can't reproduce the freeze (tried only one run but reached level 3 and more, with sound).

so it seems that at least for my hardware, the problem is fixed on jaunty.

[LaserJock (laserjock)]

Marking as Fix Released. If it shows up again feel free to reopen (mark as New or file a new bug report).