Hello list,
I thought it was time to start a fresh thread, so here it is.
I still have no working sound. I keep thinking I've fixed the problem, only to
be proved wrong at the next reboot. The hardware is a USB dongle with a Unitek
Y-247A chipset and I'm using an ordinary 3.5mm wired connection.
The problem seems to be in my user account, because I can create a new user, then adjust control panel values to suit, logging out and in after each change. The sound keeps operating as it should - until I reboot, and then it's
dead.
By 'dead' I mean (a) it's silent, and (b) when I click the control panel button to test a speaker, the icon changes colour to show it's working, but it
just hangs and never comes back.
This reminds me of another problem, in which Konsole windows are not always restored after a login. This has still not been fixed; two bugs refer:
1. https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=819459
2. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=445862
Something else also changes at the first reboot after creating a new user account: a dialogue box opens requesting permission to mount a partition - but
that partition is one of several marked 'noauto' in fstab. (Screen shot attached.)
What can possibly live under /home/prh and cause all this disruption? I might suspect I'd been hacked, but I've rebuilt a new system several times, and I've
lost count of the times I've thrown away my user account and started again.
A few suggestions to pin point the source of your problem:
- Try with a different audio device to test if the issue is localized to
this USB dongle, or if it is "system wide",
- Install a different DE (or perhaps a WM would be faster), to see
whether this is KDE-related, or system wide,
- Take a copy/backup/snapshot of your new user account before the issue occurs, and compare it (specifically the config files) to the account
after the issue appears. This may help you find out if KDE is doing
something fishy with a config file somewhere that triggers the problem. Alternatively, you could also revert to the snapshot and see if that
fixes the problem. If so, then you might want to take more granular
snapshots (specific folders or files), and restore specific folders as
the issue appears, to figure out where exactly the problem is located.
As for the drive that wants to mount itself, I don't think it is related
to this audio problem, but KDE (and DEs in general) have settings to
allow mounting devices (automatically) through the DE itself rather than fstab, which explains why the noauto setting is being ignored : check
the settings in KDE to see if it's setup to auto mount devices.
I do something like that by copying a good user account as a basis for the next iteration. The problem is just the fineness of granularity that's needed,
now that a coarse grain hasn't helped. Hey-ho. Here we must go again...
Something else also changes at the first reboot after creating a new user account: a dialogue box opens requesting permission to mount a partition - but that partition is one of several marked 'noauto' in fstab. (Screen shot attached.)
What can possibly live under /home/prh and cause all this disruption? I
might suspect I'd been hacked, but I've rebuilt a new system several times, and I've lost count of the times I've thrown away my user account and
started again.
On 6/15/22 06:52, Peter Humphrey wrote:
I do something like that by copying a good user account as a basis for the next iteration. The problem is just the fineness of granularity that's needed, now that a coarse grain hasn't helped. Hey-ho. Here we must go again...What is certain is that the issue is caused by a file in your home
directory, since creating a new user fixes the problem.
What may help you to be more specific with this would be to list what
files were modified since the last time audio worked; for example, `find $HOME -mtime 0` will show files modified in the last 24 hours
You might want to run this command on .config or .kde directories to see
what could have changed, although it's true that it might take a while
to pin point it...
Another option, since you mention that you re-created your user multiple times, is to just delete specific folders, reboot, and try audio. Maybe
start with .config as that would be the most obvious culprit. If that
doesn't work, try .kde (not sure if that folder is in ~/ or ~/.config),
then other directories.
Also, did you check `dmesg` to see if there are any errors related to
the audio device/driver? Try `dmesg --level=err,warn`
Regards,
Julien
On Wednesday, 15 June 2022 17:29:54 BST Julien Roy wrote:
On 6/15/22 06:52, Peter Humphrey wrote:
I do something like that by copying a good user account as a basis for the
next iteration. The problem is just the fineness of granularity that's needed, now that a coarse grain hasn't helped. Hey-ho. Here we must go again...
What is certain is that the issue is caused by a file in your home directory, since creating a new user fixes the problem.
Having spent several hours at this today, I've concluded that the problem is caused by the Startpage add-on to Firefox. Specifically, startpage 1.3 and Firefox 71.10. Early in the stepwise setting everything up, I started
Firefox, set its typefaces and so on, then installed Startpage. The sound system stopped working instantly. I removed Startpage and the sound came back. A reboot confirmed that no lasting damage had been done. So, I'm now using 'EU Startpage - Unofficial', which seems to working well so far.
What may help you to be more specific with this would be to list what
files were modified since the last time audio worked; for example, `find $HOME -mtime 0` will show files modified in the last 24 hours
You might want to run this command on .config or .kde directories to see what could have changed, although it's true that it might take a while
to pin point it...
Another option, since you mention that you re-created your user multiple times, is to just delete specific folders, reboot, and try audio. Maybe start with .config as that would be the most obvious culprit. If that doesn't work, try .kde (not sure if that folder is in ~/ or ~/.config), then other directories.
I'll stick with the system I have for the moment, thanks. I'll also report the problem to the developers.
Also, did you check `dmesg` to see if there are any errors related to
the audio device/driver? Try `dmesg --level=err,warn`
Thanks for your ideas, Julien.
On 6/15/22 06:52, Peter Humphrey wrote:
I do something like that by copying a good user account as a basis for the next iteration. The problem is just the fineness of granularity that's needed, now that a coarse grain hasn't helped. Hey-ho. Here we must go again...What is certain is that the issue is caused by a file in your home
directory, since creating a new user fixes the problem.
What may help you to be more specific with this would be to list what
files were modified since the last time audio worked; for example, `find $HOME -mtime 0` will show files modified in the last 24 hours
You might want to run this command on .config or .kde directories to see
what could have changed, although it's true that it might take a while
to pin point it...
Another option, since you mention that you re-created your user multiple times, is to just delete specific folders, reboot, and try audio. Maybe
start with .config as that would be the most obvious culprit. If that
doesn't work, try .kde (not sure if that folder is in ~/ or ~/.config),
then other directories.
Also, did you check `dmesg` to see if there are any errors related to
the audio device/driver? Try `dmesg --level=err,warn`
Having spent several hours at this today, I've concluded that the problem is caused by the Startpage add-on to Firefox. Specifically, startpage 1.3 and Firefox 71.10. Early in the stepwise setting everything up, I started Firefox,
set its typefaces and so on, then installed Startpage. The sound system stopped working instantly. I removed Startpage and the sound came back. A reboot confirmed that no lasting damage had been done. So, I'm now using 'EU Startpage - Unofficial', which seems to working well so far.
It's really weird that a Firefox add-on would cause system-wide sound to
stop working!
Anyway, glad that you figured it out
On Friday, 17 June 2022 02:28:26 BST Julien Roy wrote:
It's really weird that a Firefox add-on would cause system-wide sound to stop working!
Well, it may not be system-wide, but yes - you see why I took so long to
find it!
On Friday, 17 June 2022 07:35:54 BST Peter Humphrey wrote:
On Friday, 17 June 2022 02:28:26 BST Julien Roy wrote:
It's really weird that a Firefox add-on would cause system-wide sound to stop working!
Well, it may not be system-wide, but yes - you see why I took so long to find it!
It is even more weird this add-on provides just a search engine! It's not
as if the add-on is related to a media player, or something you could
expect it might need to touch audio.
I tried it on a plasma desktop and I can replicate the problem. However, I noticed if I go into Configure Audio Devices and select 'Analogue Stereo'
and then 'Analogue Stereo Duplex' back & forth, the audio starts playing again. This is with a hard wired audio, no bluetooth.
Any idea what the difference is between the various StartPage add-ons?
Is StartPage to be trusted, anymore than all the rest mass surveillance corporates?
On Friday, 17 June 2022 09:55:17 BST Michael wrote:
Is StartPage to be trusted, anymore than all the rest mass surveillance corporates?
I don't know; is that what they do? Have you looked at https:// eu.startpage.com/ ?
I'm not saying they're any worse than all the other contenders in this space, but I do wonder if there is such a think as a search engine which respects users' privacy (... asking for a friend).
... I'll also report the problem to the developers.
By default, only the LTS/ESR release of Firefox is unmasked (or marked
as stable), of which the latest version is 91.10.0, however, if you
unmask it, you can use the latest Firefox version, currently 101.0.1.
Though unmasking Firefox leads to more frequent rebuilds since the rapid release has, well, frequent releases.
As a side note, by default, searching using `emerge --search` does not
show the available masked versions (not sure if an option exists to
change that). One option that I recommend is to install app-portage/eix,
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