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Settings-related audio problems on Gnome (worked around)
Hello, I was running the x86_64 version of Debian, and I decided to switch to the i486. I tarred and gzipped my home dir and transfered it to the new installation. The version of Debian is 4.0 according to /etc/debian_version, and 4.1.1-20 according to gcc --version. The version of Gnome is 2.14.3. It is a personal computer at which I have root access and the system has 2 normal-user accounts.
The problem is that the sound doesn't work on the transfered user account. I try to open sound programs like Rhythmbox or Sound Recorder and they immediately abort or never start up, with such messages like "Your audio capture settings are invalid. Please correct them in the Multimedia settings", and sometimes no messages at all.
I know the sound works on the system in general, because for the other user on the system the sound and media programs run just fine. This user was set up as the first, default user when I reinstalled, so all of its settings should be still close to default.
The sound icon on the top right toolbar shows as mute, but when I first double-click on it, it displays the error message:
"""
The volume control did not find any elements and/or devices to control. This means either that you don't have the right GStreamer plugins installed, or that you don't have a sound card configured.
You can remove the volume control from the panel by right-clicking the speaker icon on the panel and selecting "Remove From Panel" from the menu.
"""
On subsequent double-clicks, it displays the error message
"""
No volume control GStreamer plugins and/or devices found.
"""
and this is occasionally accompanied by a separate window reiterating the previous error message.
A friend of mine suggested replacing settings files from one user folder to the other, with such things like
/home/me# cp -r ../other-user/.gnome .gnome
copying over .gnome, .gnome2, .gnome2_private, and .gconf. This hasn't helped at all -- the sound still doesn't work, and I seem to get the same error messages.
My friend's next suggestion was that I remove the preference files and folders from my home directory, and that Gnome will reset itself from there (or something to that effect -- essentially, clearing the preferences would allow for the defaults to return). I'm not positive of this, and I wanted to get input from people that know more about this sort of thing.
I've checked through the on-computer and online manuals for Gnome and GConf, and I've checked the sound settings, and entered in gstreamer-properties at the terminal and attempted to mess with those settings with no luck. I'm fairly sure this problem lies in the peculiar settings/preferences of this particular user account, but I'm not sure how to edit/change/alter these settings to work again.
Edit:: Ended up creating another account and using that seemed to work.
Last edited by he_the_great; 08-28-2008 at 10:51 PM.
Reason: Update status
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