[Jaunty] Amarok 2.0.1 will not resume playback after paused

[Ian Ellis]

Binary package hint: amarok

I just updated 64bit Jaunty today (17 Feb 2009) on my laptop and Amarok (2.0.1.1mysql5.1.30-0ubuntu1) will not resume playing music after I pause it. This happens both when I try to pause/resume from the tray icon and from inside the main application window. If I then close Amarok using the "quit" option from the tray icon, I cannot restart it again. I have to kill the process manually, then I can re-start it and resume playing my music. Then, if I pause my music again, I have to repeat the process.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/amarok
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: amarok 2:2.0.1.1mysql5.1.30-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SourcePackage: amarok
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-8-generic x86_64

[Ian Ellis (ianmailstuff)]

What was a persistent and annoying problem has turned into a bit of a freak occurrence. When I started using my laptop today after leaving it on all night it seemed like the bug had disappeared. It took some work, but I can still consistently trigger it. Here are the steps:

1. Log in
2. Start Amarok.
3. Start playing a song, pause, then resume playback.
4. Quit Amarok while the song is playing.
5. Start Amarok again. A message appears saying (for me)
         "Phonon: KDE's Multimedia Library.
     The audio playback device HDA Intel (STAC92xx analog) does not work. Falling back to PulseAudio."
6. Start playing a song. Pause. Trying to resume playback will not work.

After going through these steps, quitting Amarok does not close the Amarok process. I cannot start Amarok again until I kill the process manually. After doing that, using Amarok again doesn't trigger the bug until I log out and repeat the steps listed above.

[Jeremy Kerr (jk-ozlabs)]

Same behaviour here - Amarok will not resume after pausing, and occasionally stops playing when changing to the next track.

The UI indicates that Amarok is still in 'play' mode, but the track position bar does not progress.

In this state, Amarok can not be quit, and needs to be manually killed.

[Jeremy Kerr (jk-ozlabs)]

Potential upstream bug no: 179388

[Conan (richard-connon)]

From my experience with this and Ian's comment I would guess it's whenever amarok is using pulseaudio as I have it set to default.

[James Troup (elmo)]

Seeing the same problem after an upgrade to Jaunty. This is a regression from intrepid, and for me at least, makes amarok pretty much unusable.

[Myriam Schweingruber (myriam)]

I strongly suspect Pulseaudio to be the culprit. Why it is needed in Kubuntu is a mystery to me. I tried to get rid of it but libpulse0 is not removable without removing half of KDE with it unfortunately. (Yes, I know, this is a packaging issue not related to this bug...)
Anyway, this is a serious regression and distribution related. Amarok works well in other distributions not using Pulseaudio. Could we please, please get rid of it for Jaunty?

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Libpulse0 is not pulseaudio itself. The pulseaudio daemon itself is not installed by default in Kubuntu.

[Geoffrey (geoffrey-metais)]

I have the exact same issue on Kubuntu jaunty 64. Choossing another output peripheral than pulseaudio makes resuming songs available.
So I also strongly suspect pulseaudio.

[Conan (richard-connon)]

Presumably this bug is in fact in phonon's pulseaudio backend and not amarok itself since amarok doesn't actually interface with pulseaudio at all.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Yeah, this would either be a PA bug, or perhaps a Phonon bug.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

If you force xine (not phonon) to use alsa, what is the result?

On Apr 3, 2009 10:10 AM, "Jonathan Thomas" <email address hidden> wrote:

Yeah, this would either be a PA bug, or perhaps a Phonon bug.

** Also affects: pulseaudio (Ubuntu)
  Importance: Undecided
      Status: New

** Also affects: phonon (Ubuntu)
  Importance: Undecided
      Status: New

** Changed in: amarok (Ubuntu Jaunty)
      Status: Confirmed => Invalid

--
[Jaunty] Amarok 2.0.1 will not resume playback after paused
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/330797
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Audio Team, which is subscribed to pulseaudio in ubuntu.

[Conan (richard-connon)]

I don't know how I'd go about doing that.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Does commenting out "autospawn = yes" (add a leading semicolon) or changing it to "autospawn = no" work around this symptom? Note that you'll need to `killall pulseaudio' and restart amarok.

[Geoffrey (geoffrey-metais)]

commenting out "autospawn = yes" doesn't work for me. (neither if i change the 'yes' into 'no')
On Kubuntu jaunty 64

[Geoffrey (geoffrey-metais)]

This bug is also present on OpenSUSE 11.1 with amaroK 2.0.2 on KDE 4.2.2 too.
So it's not excusive to Kubuntu but seems to be related only to the pulseaudio project.

[Geoffrey (geoffrey-metais)]

This bug is also present on OpenSUSE 11.1 with amaroK 2.0.2 on KDE 4.2.2 too.
So it's not exclusive to Kubuntu but seems to be related only to the pulseaudio project.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Did you remember to `killall pulseaudio' after making the change to /etc/pulse/client.conf and before restarting amarok?

[Conan (richard-connon)]

Commenting out "autospawn = yes" and killing pulseaudio will surely cause phonon to fallback to a different sound device?

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

On Sat, 4 Apr 2009, Conan wrote:

> Commenting out "autospawn = yes" and killing pulseaudio will surely
> cause phonon to fallback to a different sound device?

...which is the intent of testing. I'm evaluating a particular workaround
for this issue in the pulseaudio source package.

It is not fair to ask for phonon to be patched to work around what is
essentially abysmal pulseaudio behaviour in Kubuntu.

[Geoffrey (geoffrey-metais)]

>Did you remember to `killall pulseaudio' after making the change to /etc/pulse/client.conf and before restarting amarok?

Yes I did, I killed pulseaudio for each change I made.

[Conan (richard-connon)]

If the workaround is to make amarok not use pulseaudio in kubuntu this is hardly a fix for gnome users who are using pulseaudio. Surely we need to patch whatever this "abysmal behaviour" in pulseaudio is instead.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

On Sun, 5 Apr 2009, Conan wrote:

> If the workaround is to make amarok not use pulseaudio in kubuntu this
> is hardly a fix for gnome users who are using pulseaudio. Surely we need
> to patch whatever this "abysmal behaviour" in pulseaudio is instead.

However, according to Geoffrey's feedback, he has:

1) disabled PulseAudio autospawn;
2) killed PulseAudio;
3) restarted Amarok;
4) reproduced the symptoms.

I'd like feedback from other people experiencing the symptom described in
the bug's description. Please try the four steps that I just described.

Then, while Amarok is running (after restarting it), please check the
output from `sudo fuser -v /dev/dsp* /dev/snd/*'.

It should be fairly clear that PulseAudio is not the culprit if the
symptom is reliably reproducible after the procedure is followed and
PulseAudio has been verified not to be running.

[Jeremy Kerr (jk-ozlabs)]

OK, I've gone through the same tests here:

 * Just commenting-out "autospawn = yes" is not enough, as it seems this is the default. I need to change it to " = no" for autospawn to actually be disabled.

* After killing the pulseaudio daemon, Amarok is opening the sound device directly:

[jk@pingu ~]$ sudo fuser -v /dev/dsp* /dev/snd/*
                     USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
/dev/snd/controlC0: jk 21391 F.... kmix
                     jk 28680 F.... amarok
/dev/snd/pcmC0D0p: jk 28680 F...m amarok
/dev/snd/timer: jk 28680 f.... amarok

- and pause/resume is working fine.

[Conan (richard-connon)]

So (as we said earlier...) the problem lies when phonon is using pulseaudio as a backend.
Can we confirm whether this is a bug in pulseaudio itself or in phonon's use of it?

[Jeremy Kerr (jk-ozlabs)]

I'm not too familiar with the phonon/pulseaudio infrastructure, but happy to help out with chasing this down. Catch me on IRC ('jk-' on freenode or oftc) if you need any tracing done.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

On Sun, 5 Apr 2009, Conan wrote:

> So (as we said earlier...) the problem lies when phonon is using pulseaudio as a backend.
> Can we confirm whether this is a bug in pulseaudio itself or in phonon's use of it?

Please see bug 355825.

[macio (s-maciek)]

It has helped me, try it out :
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg libxine1-ffmpeg phonon-backend-xine .