gnome session fails to start after upgrading from 7.10 to 8.04

[Backfire]

I've upgraded from 7.10 to 8.04. Right after reboot I couldn't log in to the gnome session. Failsafe session works, and I can start gnome-session in it. When I do that, there appear many warnings:

leks@warehouse:~$ gnome-session
SESSION_MANAGER=local/warehouse:/tmp/.ICE-unix/6416

** (gnome-settings-daemon:6421): WARNING **: Could not start GNOME sound.

** (gnome-settings-daemon:6421): WARNING **: Couldn't load sound file /usr/share/sounds/shutdown1.wav as sample gnome-2/logout

** (gnome-settings-daemon:6421): WARNING **: Couldn't load sound file /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav as sample gnome-2/login
xrdb: "*Label.background" on line 220 overrides entry on line 150
xrdb: "*Text.background" on line 226 overrides entry on line 191
xrdb: "*Label.foreground" on line 232 overrides entry on line 151
xrdb: "*Text.foreground" on line 238 overrides entry on line 192

** (gnome-session:6416): WARNING **: Failed to start sound.

Window manager warning: Failed to read saved session file /home/leks/.metacity/sessions/default0.ms: Failed to open file '/home/leks/.metacity/sessions/default0.ms': No such file or directory

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Initialising tracker...
Could not set idle IO priority...attempting best effort 7 priority
seahorse nautilus module initialized
starting HAL detection for ac adaptors...Initializing gnome-mount extension
none found
Throttle level is 0
evolution-alarm-notify-Message: Setting timeout for 34693 1200614400 1200579707
evolution-alarm-notify-Message: Fri Jan 18 03:00:00 2008

evolution-alarm-notify-Message: Thu Jan 17 17:21:47 2008

** (gnome-cups-icon:6643): WARNING **: IPP request failed with status 1280

** (gnome-cups-icon:6643): WARNING **: IPP request failed with status 1280
  PID TTY TIME CMD
 5632 ? 00:00:00 pulseaudio

[aschuring (aelschuring)]

This appears to be similar to what I have seen so far on every PC that I have upgraded from gutsy to hardy: after a dist-upgrade, GNOME only appears to work in fail-safe mode. When I select GNOME in non-failsafe mode, the login screen (kdm) disappears but the background stays the blue background of kdm, and nothing happens. Viewing top in one of the terminals reveals a 99% idle CPU; it's as if GNOME has become a large black hole, and remains that way until I press ctrl-alt-backspace.

I run KDE as well on most of my boxes, and that works. Without problems. Starting gnome-settings-daemon from a terminal gives the same hangs, a lot of ALSA messages and a number of xrdb messages:

xrdb: "*Label.background" on line 220 overrides entry on line 150
xrdb: "*Text.background" on line 226 overrides entry on line 191
xrdb: "*Label.foreground" on line 232 overrides entry on line 151
xrdb: "*Text.foreground" on line 238 overrides entry on line 192
/usr/share/themes/Crux/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:37: Invalid symbolic color 'fg_color'
/usr/share/themes/Crux/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:37: error: invalid identifier `fg_color', expected valid identifier

The strace log explains the hangs, but I don't understand why:
connect(23, {sa_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(16001), sin_addr=inet_addr("127.0.0.1")}, 16) = -1 ETIMEDOUT (Connection timed out)

timeout on a localhost connection? What's supposed to be listening on port 16001? There is no firewall active (all policies are ACCEPT). According to some messages on the net, should this be esd?

arno@master:~$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/esd
pulseaudio-esound-compat: /usr/bin/esd

arno@master:~$ sudo netstat -ntlp | grep 16001
[no output]

I'll try to re-login to GNOME and search for port 16001 then.

(btw: the hangs also occur in KDE when I start certain gtk-based apps, most notably firefox and gvim)

[aschuring (aelschuring)]

it appears the bug is due to pulseaudio being wrongly configured; even after manually starting pulseaudio (/usr/bin/esd is a wrapper for PA), there is no daemon listening on port 16001. However, I have found that GNOME does start after a timeout (appeared to be more than 30 seconds though?), if you happen to wait long enough. But that can also be due to two other factors:

- I did a apt-get --reinstall install ubuntu-desktop before diving into this problem (which I believe pulled in some missing pulseaudio packages)
- I manually started /usr/bin/esd from VT1 (but I'm assuming that's also done by the GNOME login script)

PA is not running when I start a KDE session; manually starting PA gives the ALSA messages that I also mentioned in the previous post. Full PA output log attached.

arno@master:~$ LC_MESSAGES=C pulseaudio
[...]
ALSA lib pcm.c:2145:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM hw:0
E: alsa-util.c: Error opening PCM device hw:0: No such file or directory
E: module.c: Failed to load module "module-alsa-sink" (argument: "device_id=0 sink_name=alsa_output.pci_1106_3059_sound_card_0_alsa_playback_0"): initialization failed.
[...]
ALSA lib pcm.c:2145:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM hw:1
E: alsa-util.c: Error opening PCM device hw:1: No such file or directory
E: module.c: Failed to load module "module-alsa-source" (argument: "device_id=1 source_name=alsa_input.usb_device_c45_60af_noserial_if1_sound_card_0_alsa_capture_0"): initialization failed.

[aschuring (aelschuring)]

(apologies for spamming this bug)
ALSA does not work under KDE either; in KDE System Settings, the sound system is configured to use OSS. If I switch to ALSA, I get no error messages but I get no sound either...

arno@master:~$ lspci -vv
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Unknown device b014
        Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Interrupt: pin C routed to IRQ 19
        Region 0: I/O ports at d000 [size=256]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

I think the problem (for me) now revolves around this issue:
E: alsa-util.c: Error opening PCM device hw:0: No such file or directory

[aschuring (aelschuring)]

Fixed for me:

arno@master:~$ alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device
arno@master:~$ asoundconf list
Names of available sound cards:
V8237
camera
arno@master:~$ asoundconf set-default-card V8237

And after this, both alsamixer and pulseaudio start correctly. I can even select ESD in KDE System Settings, and it works. Both firefox and gvim start without slowdown, I'm confident that GNOME will now also start without problems. If not, I will report back.

[aschuring (aelschuring)]

Sadly, it is not completely fixed. It seems that gnome-session does not start pulseaudio by itself when a user logs in. I have to login to a terminal and manually start pulseaudio before I can login to GNOME (yes, I can also wait for about 60 seconds, but I still won't have sound in GNOME then).

However, my knowledge ends here. I have no clue how to debug the gnome-session startup scripts. All I know is that, when I want to log in to GNOME, I have to login to a terminal first and start PA manually.

GNOME audio settings: all devices use PulseAudio, and software mixer (ESD) is checked.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, do you still have the issue in current hardy and could you describe how to trigger it on a new installation?

[Backfire (backfire22)]

No, the issue was fixed in the final release. At least, the gnome session doesn't fail to start any longer. I don't know if there are problems with autostart of pulseaudio but now it seems ok.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for the update, closing the bug since that works correctly now