Bug#637766: pulseaudio: Gdm3 greeter and various applications hang due to custom configuration of Alsa and Pulse

[Panayiotis Karabassis]

Package: pulseaudio
Version: 0.9.21-3+squeeze1
Severity: normal

Following instructions widely available on the Internet, I set-up pulse audio
to be the default ALSA device by creating the following /etc/asound.conf file:

pcm.pulse {
    type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
    type pulse
}

pcm.!default {
    type pulse
}

ctl.!default {
    type pulse
}

On subsequent reboots gdm3 hanged (in my opinion, at the point it was about to
play the welcome beep).

After bypassing the problem -by deleting the gdm3 home dir- I found that sound
related applications, such as rhythmbox and gnome-volume-control, also hanged
when asked to interact with the soundcard.

The problems ceased, as soon as I deleted the above mentioned file.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0.2
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/6 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages pulseaudio depends on:
ii  adduser                3.112+nmu2        add and remove users and groups
ii  consolekit             0.4.1-4           framework for defining and trackin
ii  libasound2             1.0.23-2.1        shared library for ALSA applicatio
ii  libc6                  2.11.2-10         Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcap2                1:2.19-3          support for getting/setting POSIX.
ii  libdbus-1-3            1.2.24-4+squeeze1 simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libgdbm3               1.8.3-9           GNU dbm database routines (runtime
ii  libice6                2:1.0.6-2         X11 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libltdl7               2.2.6b-2          A system independent dlopen wrappe
ii  libpulse0              0.9.21-3+squeeze1 PulseAudio client libraries
ii  libsamplerate0         0.1.7-3           Audio sample rate conversion libra
ii  libsm6                 2:1.1.1-1         X11 Session Management library
ii  libsndfile1            1.0.21-3+squeeze1 Library for reading/writing audio 
ii  libspeexdsp1           1.2~rc1-1         The Speex extended runtime library
ii  libudev0               164-3             libudev shared library
ii  libx11-6               2:1.3.3-4         X11 client-side library
ii  libxtst6               2:1.1.0-3         X11 Testing -- Record extension li
ii  lsb-base               3.2-23.2squeeze1  Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  udev                   164-3             /dev/ and hotplug management daemo

Versions of packages pulseaudio recommends:
ii  gstreamer0.10-pulseaud 0.10.24-1         GStreamer plugin for PulseAudio
ii  libasound2-plugins     1.0.23-1+b1       ALSA library additional plugins
ii  pulseaudio-esound-comp 0.9.21-3+squeeze1 PulseAudio ESD compatibility layer
ii  pulseaudio-module-x11  0.9.21-3+squeeze1 X11 module for PulseAudio sound se

Versions of packages pulseaudio suggests:
ii  paman                  0.9.4-1           PulseAudio Manager
ii  paprefs                0.9.9-2           PulseAudio Preferences
ii  pavucontrol            0.9.9-1           PulseAudio Volume Control
ii  pavumeter              0.9.3-1           PulseAudio Volume Meter
ii  pulseaudio-utils       0.9.21-3+squeeze1 Command line tools for the PulseAu

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/pulse/default.pa changed:
.nofail
load-sample-lazy x11-bell /usr/share/sounds/gtk-events/activate.wav
load-sample-lazy pulse-hotplug /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav
load-sample-lazy pulse-coldplug /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav
load-sample-lazy pulse-access /usr/share/sounds/generic.wav
.fail
load-module module-device-restore
load-module module-stream-restore
load-module module-card-restore
load-module module-augment-properties
load-module module-alsa-sink
.ifexists module-udev-detect.so
load-module module-udev-detect
.else
load-module module-detect
.endif
.ifexists module-bluetooth-discover.so
load-module module-bluetooth-discover
.endif
.ifexists module-esound-protocol-unix.so
load-module module-esound-protocol-unix
.endif
load-module module-native-protocol-unix
.ifexists module-gconf.so
.nofail
load-module module-gconf
.fail
.endif
load-module module-default-device-restore
load-module module-rescue-streams
load-module module-always-sink
load-module module-intended-roles
load-module module-suspend-on-idle
load-module module-console-kit
load-module module-position-event-sounds
load-module module-cork-music-on-phone


-- no debconf information