Lubuntu: banshee, rhythmbox, etc cannot play audio without pulseaudio or gstreamer1.0-alsa

[Rüdiger Kupper]

Lubuntu Raring (13.04).
The Lubuntu standard installation comes without jack, and without pulse, just plain alsa. Gstreamer applications (rhythmbox, banshee) used to work fine after installing "ubuntu-restricted-extras", which pulls in the usual gstreamer plugins.
On my system, gstreamer applications stopped working. They report:
> Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
> Cannot connect to server request channel
> jack server is not running or cannot be started
Since there is no jack on this system, never was, and is not intended to be there, I cannot understand this message. The applications do not produce sound.

This looks like gstreamer tries to start up jackd, regardless whether it is installed or not.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: libgstreamer0.10-0 0.10.36-1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-19.30-generic 3.8.8
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-19-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu8
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu May 9 15:38:20 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-02-12 (85 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Lubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release i386 (20121017.1)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: gstreamer0.10
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to raring on 2013-04-25 (13 days ago)

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

Update: Installing pulseaudio fixes the problem.
However, pulseaudio is not part of the standard Lubuntu installation, and I expect there is a reason for this. (Lubuntu is intended to be very lightweight, alsa should be enough for simple sound output.)

gstreamer0.10-alsa is installed, I take it this should enable gstreamer output with alsa. However, this does not seem to work any longer.

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

I confirm that this problem exists on another Lubuntu install, too.

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

Correction: The problem appears with Banshee and Rhythmbox, but it does not appear with Quod Libet, which also uses GStreamer.
This may mean it's not a GStreamer problem at all, but more a problem of correctly using GStreamer.

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

In addition to the following message to stdout:
> Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
> Cannot connect to server request channel
> jack server is not running or cannot be started
rhythmbox displays a message box reading
> Couldn't start playback
> Failed to create autoaudiosink element; check your GStreamer installation

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

On Tue, Aug 06, 2013 at 10:18:53PM -0000, Rüdiger Kupper wrote:
> Correction: The problem appears with Banshee and Rhythmbox, but it does not appear with Quod Libet, which also uses GStreamer.
> This may mean it's not a GStreamer problem at all, but more a problem of correctly using GStreamer.

Nope, this is neither a Banshee nor Rhythmbox problem. Both Banshee and
Rhythmbox now use gstreamer1.0, while quodlibet is still using gstreamer0.10,
which is why you see the difference here.

Gstreamer-using applications require an audio "sink" to output sound. By
default, Ubuntu uses pulseaudio for sound output by default, which is provided
by gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio or gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio depending on the
gstreamer version you're using. If you remove pulseaudio, that sink fails, and
it attempts to fall back onto another sink, which in this case is jack (which
also doesn't work because you don't have jackd running).

The correct sink to use if you've disabled pulseaudio is probably alsa, which is
provided by the gstreamer1.0-alsa package. Please make sure you have that
installed.

  affects ubuntu/banshee
  status invalid

  affects ubuntu/rhythmbox
  status invalid

--
Kind regards,
Loong Jin

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

Thanks, this was of course the solution. I'd suggest that gstreamer1.0-alsa was a dependency of ubuntu-restricted-extras. Assuming that pulseaudio is installed is all right for the standard Ubuntu installation, but not, for example, for Lubuntu. I'd expect that other Lubuntu users run into the same problem.

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

On Tue, Sep 03, 2013 at 10:13:35AM -0000, Rüdiger Kupper wrote:
> Thanks, this was of course the solution. I'd suggest that
> gstreamer1.0-alsa was a dependency of ubuntu-restricted-extras. Assuming
> that pulseaudio is installed is all right for the standard Ubuntu
> installation, but not, for example, for Lubuntu. I'd expect that other
> Lubuntu users run into the same problem.

No, probably not. I just tried installing lubuntu-desktop on a bare raring
chroot, and pulseaudio came with it. And pulseaudio doesn't belong in
ubuntu-restricted-extras -- what part of pulseaudio sounds restricted to you?

--
Kind regards,
Loong Jin

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

Hm, to my knowledge Lubuntu does not come with pulseaudio nor gstreamer. The standard install relies on audio applications that use plain ALSA. Try installing from a Lubuntu live CD.
It's certainly hard to choose which (meta-)package should pull in gstreamer1.0-alsa. But some package should include it, otherwise Lubuntu users will end up without it and have the problems described above. It's the link between ALSA and gstreamer, so it could come with one of the packages that deliver ALSA or gstreamer. There's probably no perfect answer here. It could just be included in the standard Lubuntu install, but the Lubuntu people opt for simplicity and use direct ALSA.

However, a typical scenario is as follows:
You install Lubuntu from a Live CD. You find a selection of slim audio software like audacious. However, you miss your rhythmbox/banshee/whatever. You install rhythmbox/banshee/whatever. It does not work, because there is no gstreamer. You google a bit and learn that the gstreamer plugins come with ubuntu-restricted-extras. You install it, but your rhythmbox/banshee/whatever still does not work, because there is no ALSA sink. You google a bit more but find no answer. You end up writing a bug report on launchpad ;-).

Anyway, it might even have helped if gstreamer printed a proper error message (like "no sink found") instead of trying to use the jack sink, which is probably the least likely to exist. I don't know where's the best place of doing it, but somehow it should be guaranteed that there is at least one sink present when gstreamer is installed.

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

On Tue, Sep 03, 2013 at 10:37:23PM -0000, Rüdiger Kupper wrote:
> Hm, to my knowledge Lubuntu does not come with pulseaudio nor gstreamer. The standard install relies on audio applications that use plain ALSA. Try installing from a Lubuntu live CD.
> It's certainly hard to choose which (meta-)package should pull in gstreamer1.0-alsa. But some package should include it, otherwise Lubuntu users will end up without it and have the problems described above. It's the link between ALSA and gstreamer, so it could come with one of the packages that deliver ALSA or gstreamer. There's probably no perfect answer here. It could just be included in the standard Lubuntu install, but the Lubuntu people opt for simplicity and use direct ALSA.
>
> However, a typical scenario is as follows:
> You install Lubuntu from a Live CD. You find a selection of slim audio software like audacious. However, you miss your rhythmbox/banshee/whatever. You install rhythmbox/banshee/whatever. It does not work, because there is no gstreamer. You google a bit and learn that the gstreamer plugins come with ubuntu-restricted-extras. You install it, but your rhythmbox/banshee/whatever still does not work, because there is no ALSA sink. You google a bit more but find no answer. You end up writing a bug report on launchpad ;-).
>
> Anyway, it might even have helped if gstreamer printed a proper error
> message (like "no sink found") instead of trying to use the jack sink,
> which is probably the least likely to exist. I don't know where's the
> best place of doing it, but somehow it should be guaranteed that there
> is at least one sink present when gstreamer is installed.

There is at least one sink present (the jack one). Banshee depends on
gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio | gstreamer1.0-audiosink, and the latter package is a
virtual package that can be satisfied by any audio sink. In addition, it
recommends gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio, so it should be installed by default (but
will work even if you tell apt not to install gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio, but in
that case you're responsible for choosing another audiosink).

The issue here is that gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio is also useless because you don't
use pulseaudio.

Since this issue is more specific to Lubuntu installations, I'd be tempted to
slap gstreamer1.0-alsa onto lubuntu-desktop, but it looks like none of the
default media players even use gstreamer. I'll stick lubuntu-meta onto this bug
anyway, hopefully someone more acquianted with lubuntu would be able to come up
with a better solution.

  affects ubuntu/lubuntu-meta

--
Kind regards,
Loong Jin

[raven322 (spike85051)]

nope. still getting this. with a bunch of apps. try a new .asoundrc first. then theres a setting but I forget the file that asks which sink to use. default is pulse before anything else. change it.

try this.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "alsa config w software pre-amp tweak" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issues please contact him.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[deutrino (deutrino)]

This is still a problem in Lubuntu 16.04. gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio is installed by default (presumably following Ubuntu), gstreamer1.0-alsa is not.

'sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-alsa' fixes the problem. Gstreamer apps such as banshee now output audio instead of silence.

I will file a bug against lubuntu-desktop and reference this bug.

[deutrino (deutrino)]

Never mind, the bug is referenced in lubuntu-meta, I will try to get some attention on it via forums, etc. This is pretty nasty for anyone who wants to use GStreamer apps in Lubuntu.

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running only once:
apport-collect <bug #>

and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

Hello Chris Guiver,
I am not currently using Lubuntu on any device, so I cannot easily test if the problem still exists. User deutrino could have more information.

@deutrino: Has the bug reached attention upstream? Is it still present in recent Lubuntu installs?