Thunderbird freezes when "Play a sound" is enabled

[Vish]

Binary package hint: thunderbird

Thunderbird freezes when "Play a sound" is enabled.

To reproduce:
1: Enable "Play a sound" , from thunderbird preferences
2: Play a video clip in vlc[selected output module is ALSA]
3: now when the message arrives , thunderbird freezes.

Why i'v filled this in thunderbird is because , other apps also are affected by this but they dont freeze like thunderbird.

When vlc is playing [uses ALSA audio output]
opening gstreamer-properties , and testing pulseaudio gives no sound and no error , is just says "Click OK to finish"

once this happens[thunderbird freeze] sound does not play in any other app which uses pulse audio.

repeated $pulseaudio -k restores sound

This was not a problem before the latest pulse audio updates.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Aug 8 00:24:28 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: thunderbird 2.0.0.22+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu3
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_IN
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-5.24-generic
SourcePackage: thunderbird
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-5-generic i686

[Vish (vish)]

Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: pulseaudio 1:0.9.16~test4-0ubuntu2
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_IN
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-5.24-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-5-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Is this problem still present with the current versions of thunderbird and pulseaudio in karmic?

Does vlc support output via pulseaudio? It would seem that fixing vlc to not output directly to alsa would address this problem as well.

[Vish (vish)]

I'm no longer facing this bug , seems solved from the pulseaudio end. This is a fix released in pulseaudio.

*But* this is a long standing issue in thunderbird. If the audio doesnt work for some reason , thunderbird always freezes.
It should rather timeout the operation and just not get stuck that sound is not played.

[fermulator (fermulator)]

I'm experiencing this defect with the following:
 * Ubuntu 10.04 (2.6.32-23-generic)
 * Mozilla Thunderbird (3.0.8)
 * pulseaudio (1:0.9.22~0.9.21+stable-queue-32-g8478-0ubuntu14)

Exact same symptoms as the original poster.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Fermulator - could you provide exact steps to recreate this bug report? What other application are you using when Thunderbird freezes?