Arch Linux

AnthIste

Member

Registered: 2010-05-07

Posts: 3

gstreamer hangs on playback

Hey guys, this is my first post, so just to put this in context, I'm new to Arch in general but I dont think I'm doing too badly so far . I have used Ubuntu for about a year and was looking for something slightly more mature.

Anyways, let me firstly just describe the problem that I am having. All programs that use gstreamer such as rhythmbox, totem and gstreamer-properties hang on playback. For example, if I open an audio file in totem, it doesnt start playing (stays at 0:00) but the interface still works. As soon as I hit pause / next track the application in question locks up and I have to kill it manually.

What makes this even more disturbing is that it occurs COMPLETELY RANDOMLY. Right now, I am listening to an mp3 file in totem. The previous 3 reboots, it wouldn't work, but before that it did, and so forth.

I have tried updating the entire system with pacman -Syu (which listed various gstreamer packages as targets), but it still doesn't work. Actually, after the upgrade, it seems to not work 100% of the time (I just remembered I booted "Arch Linux Fallback"). The upgrade seems to have broken ppp as well, but if I can't get that fixed I'll open a new thread.

I am using dwm as my window manager. At first I thought running gnome-settings-daemon (for themes, dual screen, fonts, wallpaper etc) is what caused the lockups, but now it locks up even if I ignore gsd completely (ie. never start it. ever).

Any advice would be great, because I have reached the limit of what I can fix myself, and I need my music

Thanks

EDIT:
Bah. Now I'm TOTALLY clueless. Restarted. Ran gnome-settings-daemon BEFORE playing music. broken. Restarted. FIRST played music. Working? Restarted. gsd. Broken. Rinse, repeat. So it seems that running gnome-settings-daemon before playing audio breaks it. But just now it broke WITHOUT gsd having been run. Sigh, this is waay over my head.

EDIT EDIT:
I have found a temporary fix, but would still really like to get this problem resolved. The script I use to start dwm now looks like this:

aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav 
gnome-settings-daemon
dwm

It works, but is far from ideal. I hear "front.. center.." every time I log on

Last edited by AnthIste (2010-05-09 11:12:24)

hurrrtin

Member

From: USA, Ohio

Registered: 2006-12-13

Posts: 23

Re: gstreamer hangs on playback

I'm having a similar issue. I've only so far noticed it in totem. When playing movies in a playlist, subtitles automatically are on (annoyingly). If I select to disable subtitles, then I get the stuck at 0:00 as if its hung, but the interface still works.

I'd like to permanently disable subtitles in totem, but the setting does not persist. That'd be a temporary fix.

AnthIste

Member

Registered: 2010-05-07

Posts: 3

Re: gstreamer hangs on playback

I have found a fix for this. I disabled various sound modules one-by-one until the problem went away. So for me, I have blacklisted the snd_intel8x0m module. The snd_intel8x0 module still loads and my sound works fine now, I havent had a hitch for about 2 weeks now.

rc.conf:
MODULES=(!snd_intel8x0m ...)