rhythmbox crashes when syncing library to ipod

[Phil Norbeck]

Rhythmbox crashes when I try to sync my music with my ipod 5th gen (w/ video). I'm running the development release of 13.04, looking for bugs and whatnot. I did not have this problem before with any other version of rhythmbox or Ubuntu.

The error generated is:

(rhythmbox:4117): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: g_object_set_valist: construct property "encoding-target" for object `RBTrackTransferBatch' can't be set after construction
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

rhythmbox 2.98-0ubuntu3
Ubuntu 13.04 raring ringtail

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: rhythmbox 2.98-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-7.14-generic 3.8.0
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-7-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.8-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Feb 23 13:53:50 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-02-10 (12 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Alpha amd64 (20130210)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: rhythmbox
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[andornaut (andornaut)]

I get the same error when attempting to sync to a Google Nexus 4:

 GLib-GObject-WARNING **: g_object_set_valist: construct property "encoding-target" for object `RBTrackTransferBatch' can't be set after construction

Same environment:

rhythmbox 2.98-0ubuntu3
Ubuntu 13.04 raring ringtail

[Adam Nixon (bananamarmot)]

Raring ringtail 64bit
rhythmbox 2.98

Rythmbox also crashes for me when I try to sync my ipod

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[gloonie (gloonie)]

Rhythmbox also crashes for me on Quantal (RB 2.98) when I try to sync my Coby player or my SanDisk Zip Clip. It worked fine up until around version 2.96 or 2.97

[MorrisseyJ (morrissey-james1)]

Can't drag songs to my Ipod. This is a recent problem.

When dragging i get the same error as above:

(rhythmbox:31239): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: g_object_set_valist: construct property "encoding-target" for object `RBTrackTransferBatch' can't be set after construction
Segmentation fault

Running 12.10, 64 bit and Rhythmbox 2.98

[Thomas Arnoux (vetetix)]

Has anyone found a workaround or a fix for this bug?

[Tankypon (tankypon)]

I have the same problem like MorrisseyJ....
When I'm dragging songs to my Ipod, Rhythmbox crash.. I have this bug since the upgrade of Ubuntu (12.10 -> 13.04).

[Adam Nixon (bananamarmot)]

This bug is super annoying. Is anyone looking into a solution?

[Alan Birstok (alanbir)]

I have also encountered this issue today. It just does not work.

[Tankypon (tankypon)]

A log of the bug in action..

[Łukasz Jeż (lukasz-jez)]

I have this issue on both Ubuntu and Lubuntu 13.04, final releases and iPod nano 2nd gen. Moreover, while deleting files from ipod seems to work in Rhythmbox, they still show up afterwards on the device but don't play and are skipped after a few seconds.

[David M (theexternvoid)]

Worked fine in Ubuntu 12.10 with Rhythmbox 2.97. Upgraded to 13.04 / 2.98 and now it crashes. iPod video 30 GB. Anyone found a way to downgrade Rhythmbox to 2.97 on Ubuntu 13.04? That might be a workaround.

[David M (theexternvoid)]

Update form my last comment: looks like the timing with the Ubuntu upgrade is coincidental. I downgraded Rhythmbox to a version that used to work and still have the same problem. The cause seems to be if I include my podcasts in the synch. If I uncheck that then it synchs fine, no crash. Just so happens I decided to add a podcast around the same time as the Ubuntu upgrade.

Here's the podcast that's causing the trouble: http://feeds.feedburner.com/dancarlin/history?format=xml

It downloaded a file, but the MP3 download failed midstream. So I suspect the problem is that it's trying to synch an corrupt file and isn't handling the error gracefully. I did see something in the console about trying to read encoding, so it might be trying to read the file encoding to tell the iPod what sort of file it is and not getting valid data, choking on that.

If the above theory is correct then the work-around is to try and find what file in your music library is corrupt. Synch subsets of your playlist and keep expanding until it crashes and you find the offending file. If you have podcasts then start unsynching that since odds are higher to get a corrupt file from a donwload than your library. Try removing newly added songs from your library if it used to synch fine prior.

Or if it's a problem with podcasting in general, a possible workaround is to stop using Rhythmbox as a podcatcher. GTKPod does a decent job at podcatching and iPod synching the podcast.

I'm attaching the podcast MP3 file that I think is breaking it.

[Tankypon (tankypon)]

I don't know if your theory is just David M but in my case, this is not a file which is corrupted that it produces the crash of rhythmbox..
My Ipod is not synchronize with rhythmbox, I put musics on it when I want, I don't want to synchronize all of my music and it's why I put specially musics one by one on it. And today, every music I have tried, the rhythmbox player crashed. I have tried MP3 or OGG files but it crashes unexpectedly.
(Forgive my bad English..)

[Tankypon (tankypon)]

Today, I have tested another music player and the bug is also here... I test with Banshee 2.6.1 (the last on the default repository on Ubuntu 13.04). So this is not Rhythmbox that is involved in this bug! Maybe the libgpod, anyone know how downgrade this library to make a test?

[Ian (eddieshowcase)]

I am also seeing this issue with rhythmbox after upgrading to 13.04. Crashes on my 2nd gen Nano as well as gen 5? classic...

FWIW I was able to use gtkpod successfully to copy music onto my iPod as a workaround.

[Alan Birstok (alanbir)]

I've been using Banshee 2.6.1 all week wihtout a problem. I even sync from a clean format my ipod over 100 GB of music using banshee. I gave up on troubleshooting rhythmbox because banshee works fine.

[Juan David Uchuvo González (jaundavid)]

I used before ubuntu 13.04 upgrade banshee for sync my ipod classic 2007 and all work fine, After upgrade, banshee start to throw error then I decided use rhythmbox and the error affected to it too, then I guess that the error is not directly related with rythmbox but with library that it use for manage de ipod (libgpod?).

[anivegmin (quentintin)]

I also have this problem with both Rhythmbox and Banshee (I would say this bug is a deal breaker for using the Ubuntu at all)

As David M @14 have managed to use GTKpod with success so I'll stick with it for now.

[Thomas Arnoux (vetetix)]

The bug could be linked to this one, affecting me on both Rhythmbox and Banshee :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/banshee/+bug/1159513

[Adam Nixon (bananamarmot)]

I've had to downgrade to 12.10 to be able to use my iPod again. I have to agree with anivegmin, if it can't sync media players Ubuntu 13.04 is dead in the water

[Javier (jnorambuena)]

I get this error in Ubuntu 13.04 64bit with a Walkman NWZ-E444

[scarboni888 (scarboni888)]

Sansa Fuze+ player worked fine syncronizing music and podcasts with Rhythmbox on Ubuntu 12.10 now after upgrading to 13.04 it pukes up the following and disappears from the processes list whenever I attempt to 'Sync with Library':

(rhythmbox:20881): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: g_object_set_valist: construct property "encoding-target" for object `RBTrackTransferBatch' can't be set after construction
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Thanks!

[David M (theexternvoid)]

Looks like code that sets an encoding property when synching was removed for the 2.98 version. Restoring it seems to fix the problem for me. I attached a patch file for this. Just load this up and rebuild.

[David M (theexternvoid)]

I want to note that the patch I loaded here probably re-introduces some other bug, that this code was removed for a reason, so don't consider this a suggestion for an official fix. But if it works around the problem for you then feel free to use it until an official fix is found.

[Olivia (oli-maia)]

David, I know this might be a stupid question, but could you tell me how do I go about applying this patch? I'd like to try it out, but I've never applied a patch before. I've been searching the internet for an answer but no luck.

[David M (theexternvoid)]

I chatted with the app owner of Rhythmbox about this. I was right about my above patch fixing this bug but re-introducing a different bug. So ignore that for fixing this.

He says a permanent fix was applied. So looks like Ubuntu's build grabbed the wrong copy of Rhythmbox's source code. Looks to me like this fix was put there a while ago. Oops! Badd Ubuntu! It's commit ID 0b3bc7d1b65af0c864a0c0803c026bb8214d71b3 of the official Rhythmbox GIT repository, applied Nov 29 2012. Just a one line code change.

So here are the steps if you want to pull it into Ubuntu for yourself.
* Command: apt-get source rhythmmbox
(No need to sudo for getting source.)
* Unzip the source to rhythmmbox-2.98.
* Command: cd rhythmmbox-2.98
* Edit file shell/rb-track-transfer-batch.c: modify line 824 where it's setting encoding-target, change the G_PARAM_CONSTRUCT_ONLY to G_PARAM_CONSTRUCT.
* Command: ./configure --prefix=/usr
* Command: make
* Command: sudo cp shell/.libs/rhythmbox /usr/bin/

Note, the next update from Ubuntu (hopefully with the fix) should overwrite when you install like this.

If you don't want to overwrite the Ubuntu installation and instead want it to live side-by-side then...
* Don't include --prefix=/usr in the .configure command listed above. Just: ./configure
* Do this command instead of sudo cp to install it: sudo make install
* At this point you launch it from shell/rhythmbox (in the source directory).
* And when you want to uninstall the side-by-side copy: sudo make uninstall

[scarboni888 (scarboni888)]

David that's some fantastic sleuthing and so helpful of you to offer the fixit remedy.

However I got to the following part:

* Command: ./configure --prefix=/usr

and get the following which results in an error at the end:

checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... yes
checking whether make supports nested variables... yes
checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config
checking pkg-config is at least version 0.9.0... yes
checking for gobject-introspection... configure: error: gobject-introspection-1.0 is not installed

Any idea what is gobject-introspection-1.0? Should I just apt-get install gobject-introspection-1.0??

Thanks again!

[scarboni888 (scarboni888)]

Ok so I found out on http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=95067 that I can use the following to resolve the gobject-introspection-1.0 dependency:

sudo apt-get install gobject-introspection

It gets past the previous error and then I get:

****************************************
checking for intltool >= 0.35.0... found
configure: error: Your intltool is too old. You need intltool 0.35.0 or later.
****************************************

So then I sudo apt-get initltool and got further.

However still an error at the end of the ./configure --prefix=/usr command:

****************************************
configure: error: Package requirements ( gobject-introspection-1.0 >= 0.10.0 gtk+-3.0 >= 3.4.0 gdk-pixbuf-2.0 >= 2.18.0 glib-2.0 >= 2.32.0 gio-2.0 >= 2.32.0 gio-unix-2.0 >= 2.32.0 libsoup-2.4 >= 2.26.0 libsoup-gnome-2.4 >= 2.26.0 libpeas-1.0 >= 0.7.3 libpeas-gtk-1.0 >= 0.7.3 libxml-2.0 >= 2.7.8 tdb >= 1.2.6 json-glib-1.0) were not met:

No package 'gtk+-3.0' found
No package 'gdk-pixbuf-2.0' found
No package 'libsoup-2.4' found
No package 'libsoup-gnome-2.4' found
No package 'libpeas-1.0' found
No package 'libpeas-gtk-1.0' found
No package 'tdb' found
No package 'json-glib-1.0' found

Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.

Alternatively, you may set the environment variables RHYTHMBOX_CFLAGS
and RHYTHMBOX_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details.
****************************************

Is there some meta-package(s) I can install to get out of this seemingly ever-growing list of dependency requirements?

[jfrancis (jfrancis252)]

Ubuntu Studio 13.04, 64-bit. iPod shuffle won't sync with Rhythmbox - immediately crashes whenever I put in just one song. Thought it was the iPod, so I restored it with a Mac and tried again, but no luck. Fix ASAP please.

[Nizar Kerkeni (nizarus)]

Ubuntu 13.04, 64-bit.
Same crash :
(rhythmbox:12924): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: g_object_set_valist: construct property "encoding-target" for object `RBTrackTransferBatch' can't be set after construction
Erreur de segmentation (core dumped)
The workaround described in #30 don't work. The two packages gobject-introspection and libgirepository1.0-dev are installed but still have the same crash/

[Olivia (oli-maia)]

David, thanks a lot for the guide. When I checked the file, though, line 824 was already without the "ONLY". There were two other instances of the same expression with the "ONLY". Should I keep it like this and compile it or mess with another one of those lines of code?

[Olivia (oli-maia)]

Nevermind my last comment. Weirdly enough, I downloaded the source again and now it's just like you described it. Odd.

[Olivia (oli-maia)]

 Still same crash as described in #32, even after successfully going through the process described by David in #28:

(rhythmbox:28656): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: g_object_set_valist: construct property "encoding-target" for object `RBTrackTransferBatch' can't be set after construction
Falha de segmentação (imagem do núcleo gravada)

[Hajime Fujita (hfujita)]

@David M, it perfectly worked when I tried your suggestion in the comment #28 (I rebuilt debian pakcage.) My environement is
Ubuntu 13.04 amd64 + iPod nano 5th gen. 8GB.

[Thomas Arnoux (vetetix)]

I tried the solution described on comment #28, it didn't work. It seems I got the exact same result as Olivia in comment #35: nothing changed.

In the sources, the _ONLY wasn't present, so at first I built Rhythmbox as it was. Since it didn't work, I tried adding the _ONLY and rebuilding, but it didn't change anything…

Any solution ?

[greenteemo (greenteemo)]

Hello!

Same issue here on Ubuntu 13.04 64bit using Sony Xperia U as external device (Android):

GLib-GObject-WARNING **: g_object_set_valist: construct property "encoding-target" for object `RBTrackTransferBatch' can't be set after construction
Speicherzugriffsfehler (Speicherabzug geschrieben)

T.

[greenteemo (greenteemo)]

I tried applying the patch David described. But I get the same errors as the other users. Isn't there a fix that works? I really need Rhythmbox! With a broken Rhythmbox about 1/3 of the things I do with Ubuntu are rubbish and I can use some other OS.

T.

[Trevor H (hughes532001)]

I'm not sure if this is the same but but I now have 3 ipods shown in Nautilus and when either Banshee or rhythnbox is started my Ipod is shown as a network drive and the media player crashes.

I hope a fix can be sorted.

Trevor

[Iain Hamilton (iain-foom)]

As others have said, if Ubuntu cannot sync media devices they may as well forget it.

[william fischer (maxxjvx)]

I get the same error, I have not tried the patch yet:

(rhythmbox:9922): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: g_object_set_valist: construct property "encoding-target" for object `RBTrackTransferBatch' can't be set after construction
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Linux MYUBLNX415 3.8.0-25-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jun 6 20:47:07 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 13.04
Release: 13.04
Codename: raring

[william fischer (maxxjvx)]

Forgot to mention, this is a fresh install with updates current to 22 Jun 2013. I am using an iPod Nano 5th 8Gb blue. The sync crash hosed my music on the iPod. I had to re-initialized the iPod (wipe it) just to get it working again. I still am not able to transfer music as Rhythmbox keeps crashing.

[william fischer (maxxjvx)]

I attempted the fix described by David on #28 and still got the same error message and Rhythmbox crashed attempting to sync to iPod Nano 5g blue 8Gb

[James E. Flemer (jflemer)]

Workaround / temp fix for raring:

Use rhythmbox from gnome3 ppa:
https://launchpad.net/~gnome3-team/+archive/gnome3

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rhythmbox
sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gnome3-team-gnome3-raring.list

[Sybillance (marching365)]

Ipod Video (5th gen) owner here: can verify method on #45 works like a charm.

[Sybillance (marching365)]

also running 32bit 13.04

[Julien-Charles Lévesque (jclevesque)]

Can't someone push a proper fix to the Ubuntu repositories? This is silly.

[Carlos Arnau Ros (carnau)]

To #30

I've solved it installing this packages:

libgirepository1.0-dev
intltool

[Ben Linsey-Bloom (ben-kitserve)]

Installing libgirepository1.0-dev and intltool didn't help me, it still crashes soon after clicking 'sync library'

[AKulmala (ari-kulmala)]

This also affects me with Creative Zen and the instructions in comment #45 fixed the issue, thank you!

One clarification, I believe the last sudo in #45 removes the repository added in the first place, so no need to further remove that repository with some other command?

[David Henningsson (diwic)]

Hi and thanks for the research,

It looks like this is fixed in Ubuntu 13.10 (I verified by looking at the source), so I'm closing this bug as fix released.

(If you would like this to be pushed into 13.04, you need to follow the procedures for stable release updates, but the question is how much sense that would make now that 13.10 is just a month from being released.)

[jzacsh (jzacsh)]

First google result for upgrading to 13.10 ("not recommended") http://askubuntu.com/questions/302762

I don't know anything about Rhythmbox's codebase... could someone list commands needed to build and run it from head?

[tatsu tatsu (tatsu)]

Same here.

Ubuntu 14.04, iphone 3