[Pkg-pulseaudio-devel] Bug#513676: Starting /usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11 from XDG .desktop item is too late for KDE42 phonon to detect it.

[Daniel Pittman]

Package: pulseaudio
Version: 0.9.13-2
Severity: important

(this refers to the pulseaudio and KDE 4.2 packages from experimental)

PulseAudio ships /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop to automatically start
the PulseAudio user server when a desktop environment such as KDE starts
running.

Under KDE 4.2 the startup races with the other autostart items, resulting in
phonon (the audio abstraction layer) failing to detect PulseAudio: it
initializes and looks for the PA server before PA is running.


I don't know if this also effects the GNOME environment, but it seems likely
that any environment that started the PulseAudio system from the XDG directory
would be vulnerable to this same race.

I fixed it myself by using a script in .kde4/env to start PulseAudio prior to
any KDE components loading, but the same could be done using a script in the
(Debian specific) /etc/X11/Xsession.d directory.


I rated this bug 'important' because I suspect that this is a race between
Phonon and PulseAudio but I can't actually prove it: I /never/ had PA win the
race, so KDE / Phonon always reported that PulseAudio was not working.

On that basis I think it is reasonable to believe that, at least for some
users, KDE4 will probably never be able to use PulseAudio sound with the
current setup, and certainly not with any reliability.


Anything started after KDE initialized did work with PA as expected, of
course, so it is clear that PA is working, just racing with Phonon.


Finally, this could be argued to be a bug in KDE4, which might better
automatically start PulseAudio or something like that.  I felt, in balance,
that the XDG startup issue might show up with other environments, but if you
disagree please reassign this to the 'phonon' package.

Regards,
        Daniel

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages pulseaudio depends on:
ii  adduser                       3.110      add and remove users and groups
ii  consolekit                    0.2.10-5   framework for defining and trackin
ii  libasound2                    1.0.18-1   shared library for ALSA applicatio
ii  libasyncns0                   0.3-1      Asyncronous name service query lib
ii  libbluetooth2                 3.36-1     Library to use the BlueZ Linux Blu
ii  libc6                         2.7-18     GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcap1                       1:1.10-14  support for getting/setting POSIX.
ii  libdbus-1-3                   1.2.1-5    simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libflac8                      1.2.1-1.2  Free Lossless Audio Codec - runtim
ii  libgdbm3                      1.8.3-4    GNU dbm database routines (runtime
ii  libltdl3                      1.5.26-4   A system independent dlopen wrappe
ii  libogg0                       1.1.3-4    Ogg Bitstream Library
ii  liboil0.3                     0.3.15-1   Library of Optimized Inner Loops
ii  libpolkit-dbus2               0.9-2      library for accessing PolicyKit vi
ii  libpolkit2                    0.9-2      library for accessing PolicyKit
ii  libpulsecore8                 0.9.13-2   PulseAudio sound server core
ii  libsamplerate0                0.1.4-1    audio rate conversion library
ii  libsndfile1                   1.0.17-4   Library for reading/writing audio 
ii  libspeexdsp1                  1.2~rc1-1  The Speex extended runtime library
ii  libwrap0                      7.6.q-16   Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers libra
ii  lsb-base                      3.2-20     Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip

Versions of packages pulseaudio recommends:
ii  gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio      0.9.7-2    GStreamer plugin for PulseAudio
ii  libasound2-plugins            1.0.18-2   ALSA library additional plugins
ii  padevchooser                  0.9.3-2    PulseAudio Device Chooser
ii  paprefs                       0.9.6-2    PulseAudio Preferences
ii  pulseaudio-esound-compat      0.9.13-2   PulseAudio ESD compatibility layer
ii  pulseaudio-module-hal         0.9.13-2   HAL device detection module for Pu
ii  pulseaudio-module-x11         0.9.13-2   X11 module for PulseAudio sound se

Versions of packages pulseaudio suggests:
ii  paman                         0.9.4-1    PulseAudio Manager
ii  pavucontrol                   0.9.7-1    PulseAudio Volume Control
ii  pavumeter                     0.9.3-1    PulseAudio Volume Meter
ii  pulseaudio-utils              0.9.13-2   Command line tools for the PulseAu

-- no debconf information