[K12OSN] sound in Rhythmbox only works for one user

[Petre Scheie]

Just a weird follow-up: As mentioned below, removing all the .g* directories from the 
user's $HOME seemed to fix the problem.  I then spent two hours debugging a LDA problem 
that was affecting everyone (as usual, I was the enemy, in that I had commented out 
something I shouldn't have in the process of removing the floppy drive from LDA since 
most of my clients boot from etherboot floppies and I don't want the LDA to scan the 
floppy drive).  After finally getting the LDA fixed, I logged in as that user again, 
only to find that sound in Rhythmbox and the gstreamer-properties test no longer worked. 
  Not only that, but removing the new .g* directories did not fix it this time.  Logged 
in as another user on that same workstation, gstreamer worked fine; logged in as the 
problem user, no sound.  Did this switching back and forth between user IDs, trying to 
find out what the difference was, to no avail.  Decided to give up for the night, logged 
in one more time as problem user and...gstreamer sound started working again!  And I 
hadn't changed anything from the previous login attempt.  Since it was working, I 
decided to quit while I was ahead.  But I'm really stumped as to why it's so erratic and 
only for this one user.  The only change I made during all this, aside from wiping out 
the .g* directories a couple times, was deleting the .esd_auth file, just as a guess; 
but that, too, is recreated every time the user logs in.  The real problem is I'm not 
confident it won't break again, since I don't know what caused it to fail before.

Petre

Peter Scheie wrote:
> Thanks Gadi.  Using the gstreamer-properties test, it failed for that 
> user.  So I renamed her ,gconf, .gconfd, .gnome, .gnome2 and 
> .gnome2_private directories to something different, and then logged in 
> as her, letting gnome create new versions of those directories, and it 
> worked.  So, one of those had something bad in them.
> 
> Petre
> 
> Gideon Romm wrote:
>> Petre-
>>
>> Try logging in as that user and either open a terminal and run:
>> gstreamer-properties  (which will bring up a GUI and choose "esd" as the
>> audio sink)  OR I believe in Fedora the same GUI can be opened by going
>> to:  System -> Preferences -> Multimedia System Selector   (or some
>> such)
>>
>> (They keep moving the menu around, so I have gotten accustomed to
>> knowing how to run the GUIs from a terminal window ;) )
>>
>> In the future, you could do:  scp -r oldbox:/home/pam /home/
>> Be sure that all of the permissions and ownerships are preserved.  I
>> usually prefer to use rsync, because if the connection breaks while
>> transferring the files, you can pick up where you left off.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> -Gideon
>>
>> On Thu, 2006-08-17 at 07:56 -0500, Petre Scheie wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks Gideon!  That worked...mostly.  The gconf-editor wasn't 
>>> installed (should it have been?) so yum was my friend.  After 
>>> installing it and making the changes, sound on Rhythmbox started 
>>> working for all the users except one.  The one difference with this 
>>> user is that I copied all her $HOME files from our old 4.2.2 server 
>>> to her home directory on this new 5.0 server; she's the only one 
>>> where I needed to do that.  I suspect that some old setting/file was 
>>> brought along that is interfering.  To copy the files, I just used 
>>> ran 'scp oldbox:/home/pam/* /home/pam/' on the new box.  This isn't 
>>> the best way because it seems to miss any hidden directories, e.g., 
>>> .ssh/.  So, OTOH, if I did bring along an interfering config 
>>> file/directory, I'd expect it to be a hidden one of which I don't 
>>> think I got many, if any.  Any other ideas?  Thanks for your help.
>>>
>>> Petre
>>>
>>> Gideon Romm wrote:
>>>
>>>> Petre-
>>>>
>>>> rhythmbox uses gstreamer.  if you are using "esd" do this:
>>>>
>>>> 1.  log in as a user with "sudo" privileges and run "sudo gconf-editor"
>>>> OR  log in and "su" to root (NOTE:  "su" not "su -") and run
>>>> "gconf-editor"
>>>> 2.  Go to: system > gstreamer > 0.10 > default
>>>> 3.  change the audiosink value to:  "esdsink" and hit enter
>>>> 4.  right click on that field and select "Set as Mandatory"
>>>>
>>>> Next time the user logs in, you should get sound from rhythmbox
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> -Gadi
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, 2006-08-16 at 16:00 -0500, Petre Scheie wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I got Rhythmbox playing sound on the clients for one user (me, not 
>>>>> as root), but when others try to play, say MP3 files, nothing 
>>>>> happens when they click the Play button: no sound, the timer 
>>>>> indicator doesn't move, etc.  Perhaps a permissions issue 
>>>>> somewhere? It's not a permissions issue on the MP3 files because 
>>>>> the users can play those just fine through xmms.  Does Rhythmbox 
>>>>> need a special rc file or directory or some such in the users home 
>>>>> directory which I might have but they're missing?
>>>>>
>>>>> Petre
>>>>>
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