LinuxQuestions.org - Rhythmbox locks up when I try to play any song

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Rhythmbox locks up when I try to play any song

Hey all! I'm a newly registered user here. So go easy on me at first :p

Anyhow, let me start off by saying sound on my Fedora Core 3 machine (Athlon 2800) works perfectly. The sound drivers are obviously working great because sound works in -every- app except Rhythmbox. Let me also state that I have never used rhythmbox before now. I was very impressed with how it looks though.

When I start Rhythmbox, I import my music files. It comes up with a very nice looking GUI. But, when I click 'Play', the application locks up hard core. (I've tried doing it as a normal user and as root) I have to do a 'Force Quit' in Gnome or kill it from the command line. XMMS and mplayer both play the files fine. I have all the MP3 plugins installed:

[root@server ~]# rpm -qa | grep mp3:
gstreamer-plugins-mp3-0.8.5-0.lvn.2.3
xmms-mp3-1.2.10-0.lvn.2.3

Other important packages:
[root@server ~]# rpm -qa | grep gstreamer
gstreamer-plugins-mp3-0.8.5-0.lvn.2.3
gstreamer-plugins-0.8.5-1
gstreamer-plugins-devel-0.8.5-1
gstreamer-0.8.7-4.FC3.0
gstreamer-devel-0.8.7-4.FC3.0
gstreamer-tools-0.8.7-4.FC3.0

[root@server ~]# rpm -qa | grep rhythmbox
rhythmbox-0.8.8-1

Things I have done to try and fix it:

alsactl store/restore
alsamixer # Nothing important was muted.
gstreamer-properties: Ok, now this is where it gets interesting. The only sound systems that the 'Test' button works on, is OSS. ALSA gives the following error:

Failed to construct test pipeline for 'ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture'
ESD gives the same message, except it says ESD at the end instead of ALSA, same for the others also.
So I tried changing it to OSS. It didn't effect Rhythm box at all. Still locks up.

My Fedora installation is a clean install (Like I always do), NOT an upgrade.

I'm using an onboard soundcard (It's crappy, but it should work, esp since no other applications have problems.): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97

I've also tried googling for every combination of 'Fedora', 'Rhythmbox', and whatever other keywords I could think of. I see lots of people having problems with Rhythmbox, but no-one having a problem quite like mine.

Just for kicks here's my lspci:

Code:

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8378 [KM400/A] Chipset Host Bridge

00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI Bridge

00:0a.0 Communication controller: Agere Systems (former Lucent Microelectronics) V.92 56K WinModem (rev 03)

00:0b.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)

00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)

00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)

00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)

00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)

00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)

00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)

00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)

00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800 South]

00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)

00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8378 [S3 UniChrome] Integrated Video (rev 01)

P.S. Linux has been the only OS on my desktop for over 4 years now. I'm pretty proficient at fixing things. However, I spend most of my time writing code, and I usually don't mess with audio stuff. I've always used XMMS for music, but Rhythmbox seems to have some really awesome features that I am just dying to try out. I sincerley appreciate any help anyone can offer.

-Jeremy

The only way I could get rhythmbox working with mp3s properly is by downloading an older version. There's a thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...=rhythmbox+mp3
Follow that guy's instructions and you should have a working copy of rhythmbox. Outdated, but working nonetheless. Playlists are a little buggy but as for playing, searching, all that... you'll be good to go.

Zip

I don't think using an old version is not going to fix this problem. Let me quote something from the thread that you sent me to read:

Quote:

Why would you use old Red Hat Linux 9 packages for Fedora Core? It's also weird to delete a Fedora Core package and to replace it with a Red Hat Linux 9 package. Adding mp3 support is done with add-on packages.

http://rpm.livna.org provides clean and up-to-date extra packages for mp3 support, How to add that repository to your yum.conf or Apt-Rpm sources list? Read the main page.

__________________
Fedora Project Contributor
Member, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program

Like he said, the support for -mp3- files is done via add-on packages (Which I have already installed.) Also, lack of mp3 support, as far as I know, does not cause the application to lock up completely. Other people are using this version Rhythmbox on Fedora Core 3 without problems. There has to be a way to fix this without going back to a year old version of rhythmbox.

-Jeremy

Wrong approach.

Out-of-the-box, rhythmbox should play OGG and WAV files, for instance. Only if it does, you're ready to try MP3 add-ons. If it locks up for OGG files already, you've got a problem which is unrelated to the gstreamer-plugins-mp3 package.

Quote:

I've always used XMMS for music,

Does that one work for you when you configure it to play via ALSA output driver?

Let me start by saying, yeah, everything is setup to use ALSA. In fact, mixing even works. (For example gaim sounds play in the background while my music is playing, I can hear both.)

Quote:

Out-of-the-box, rhythmbox should play OGG and WAV files, for instance. Only if it does, you're ready to try MP3 add-ons. If it locks up for OGG files already, you've got a problem which is unrelated to the gstreamer-plugins-mp3 package.

Right, which I assumed was the case anyhow since I didn't get any errors about an unsupported file format. Then again, I shouldn't make assumptions. So I downloaded a .ogg and a .wav file and tried to play them. The ogg file locks up Rhythmbox just like the mp3's. Rhythmbox refused to even import the .wav file, so I'm not sure how to even try and play it.

Just to make certain it's not the mp3 plugin. I removed the plugin:

[root@server ~]# rpm -e gstreamer-plugins-mp3-0.8.5-0.lvn.2.3

And tried it again. Rhythmbox still locks up when trying to play files, with no error message given. It's the same case whether I have gstreamer-properties set to OSS or ALSA.

I have a feeling it's something really simple.

-Jeremy

Quote:

I have a feeling it's something really simple.

Maybe, maybe not. ;) There don't seem to be any bug reports about such symptoms. Only just a bit similar is that one. If you cannot get rhythmbox working in a fresh user account, consider submitting a bug report.

Thanks for that bugzilla link. I did an strace, and looks like it's the exact same strace as the one posted under that bug. Looks like Rhythmbox is getting into a futex loop waiting for some resource to become available:

futex(0x832c25c, FUTEX_WAIT, 5871, {0, 481000}) = -1 ETIMEDOUT (Connection timed out)
gettimeofday({1104345130, 771529}, NULL) = 0
futex(0x826e728, FUTEX_WAKE, 1) = 0
clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1104345130, 772070000}) = 0
futex(0x832c25c, FUTEX_WAIT, 5873, {0, 459000}) = -1 ETIMEDOUT (Connection timed out)
gettimeofday({1104345130, 775845}, NULL) = 0
futex(0x826e728, FUTEX_WAKE, 1) = 0
clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1104345130, 776420000}) = 0
futex(0x832c25c, FUTEX_WAIT, 5875, {0, 425000}) = -1 ETIMEDOUT (Connection timed out)
gettimeofday({1104345130, 778527}, NULL) = 0
futex(0x826e728, FUTEX_WAKE, 1) = 0
clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1104345130, 779068000}) = 0
futex(0x832c25c, FUTEX_WAIT, 5877, {0, 459000}) = -1 ETIMEDOUT (Connection timed out)
gettimeofday({1104345130, 782838}, NULL) = 0
futex(0x826e728, FUTEX_WAKE, 1) = 0
clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1104345130, 783950000}) = 0

Does anyone know how to decipher the futext system call? What resource is it waiting on?

-Jeremy

P.S. I posted a comment at that bugzilla link. I'm going to do what I can to get this fixed.

After fighting with this for some time. I finally decided to check the -official- websites for rhythmbox and gstreamer for the latest versions of the respective applications. Turns out, each had one revision newer version than that in the standard Fedora repositories. I downloaded these new RPM's and installed them, and now all is good.

-Thanks for your help, Misc. If you ever need someone to debug some C or Java code, drop me an email ;)