Hi all,

I'm puzzled by a problem, that Amarok does not work (doesn't play anything), when I'm logged in with my account. When I log in with another account, it works with no issues at all. Settings appear to be identical. An Amarok-fork application, Clementine, does the same. I guess it has something to do with phonon-gstreamer, but I cannot figure out any solution.

I tried do install phonon-vlc, but it only led to crashes of phonon settings module and Amarok wouldn't start at all.

Any ideas?

OpenSUSE 13.2
Amarok 2.8.0-28.1
libphonon4qt5 4.8.1-2.4.1
phonon4qt5-backend-gstreamer 4.8.2-2.8.2


Oak

OakL wrote:An Amarok-fork application, Clementine, does the same. I guess it has something to do with phonon-gstreamer, but I cannot figure out any solution.

Clementine does not use Phonon or phonon-gstreamer. It uses gstreamer directly, and only supports the old 0.10.

I tried do install phonon-vlc, but it only led to crashes of phonon settings module and Amarok wouldn't start at all.

The phonon-vlc for openSUSE 13.2 is compiled against VLC 2.1 and doesn't work with the current 2.2.x.

Any ideas?

Try to remove the folder ~/.config/pulse/, this will reset all volumes though.

Might also be a permission issue. Is your user part of the "audio" group? Try adding it if not (it shouldn't be necessary normally, but it can help in case of such problems).

Wolfi323,

wolfi323 wrote:Clementine does not use Phonon or phonon-gstreamer. It uses gstreamer directly, and only supports the old 0.10.

Thank you for explanation.

wolfi323 wrote:The phonon-vlc for openSUSE 13.2 is compiled against VLC 2.1 and doesn't work with the current 2.2.x.

OK, I won't try use it anymore, then.

wolfi323 wrote:Try to remove the folder ~/.config/pulse/, this will reset all volumes though.

Tried, logged out & in and still have the same problem.

wolfi323 wrote:Might also be a permission issue. Is your user part of the "audio" group? Try adding it if not (it shouldn't be necessary normally, but it can help in case of such problems).

Added myself to the "audio" group, but it has no effect. It shouldn't though, since the other user is not a member of "audio" either...

I appreciate your help and hope to get some more tips to test the sound and resolve the issue.

By the way, all system sounds work fine.

Regards,

Oak

If both players don't play then this has nothing to do with Phonon, as Clementine uses Gstreamer directly (last I know).

Check your Pulseaudio settings and see if you have nothing muted there, or in KMix.

Hello Mamarok,

Mamarok wrote:If both players don't play then this has nothing to do with Phonon, as Clementine uses Gstreamer directly (last I know).

Actually now I see Clementaine says "your Gstreamer installation is missing a plug-in". This is why I think from the beginning, that something wrong is with Gstreamer. What is mystery to me is, why it shoul be missing for one user and fine for another one. On a fresh install.

Mamarok wrote:Check your Pulseaudio settings and see if you have nothing muted there, or in KMix.

Nope, I couldn't see anything muted. Also, VLC is playing fine, MP3 or AVI or anything else, with sound.

If I understand it correctly now, Amarok is using Phonon sound system, which is using Gstreamer libraries (a choice of few, available also with VLC or MPlayer). Correct? Then, if Clementine's problem should be also the Amarok's problem and I'll try to seek missing plugins. Although, I installed all plugins which were recommended. What I'm not sure is, if the versions of the plugins are not missmached with phonon compilation and I have no clue, what's right and how to identify it . But again, why this should be wrong for one user and OK for another? That's the mistery!

Oak

OakL wrote:Actually now I see Clementaine says "your Gstreamer installation is missing a plug-in". This is why I think from the beginning, that something wrong is with Gstreamer. What is mystery to me is, why it shoul be missing for one user and fine for another one. On a fresh install.

This might be a problem with the gstreamer plugin cache, ~/.gstreamer-0.10/ resp. ~/.cache/gstreamer-1.0/. Try to remove both folders, they get recreated automatically.

If I understand it correctly now, Amarok is using Phonon sound system, which is using Gstreamer libraries (a choice of few, available also with VLC or MPlayer). Correct?

That is correct. Although I'm not sure of the current state of the MPlayer backend...

Then, if Clementine's problem should be also the Amarok's problem and I'll try to seek missing plugins.

No. As I indicated already, Clementine uses the old gstreamer-0.10, whereas Amarok (or rather phonon-gstreamer) uses gstreamer-1.x.
Both have different plugins, they are completely independent of each other.
gstreamer-0.10 uses the gstreamer-0_10-plugins-xxx packages, gstreamer-1.x the gstreamer-plugins-xxx packages.

OK,

so thanks to Wolfi323's help I was finally able to guess the source of the trouble. It was only down to the fact, that I paid attention to install all plugins for 0.10 version, but what Phonon really wanted was plugins for 1.X version. Once I installed them and rebooted, it works.

Before that, I tried to remove all sorts of config files, but with no success.

Why it was working with the other user even without those plugins in the same KDE environment, on the same computer and apparently with the same settings, that remains a mystery...

Thank you for your help!

Regards,

Oak

Maybe you just didn't play the same type of tracks? Those plugins are mostly needed for MP3 or aac file types, not for Ogg

An old thread, but I have exactly the same problem.
I cannot play anything in amarok while another user can.
When I hit the "Play" button nothing happens. The button stays at the "play" icon (should change to "pause") and no sound.

When I go to "settings" -> "configure Amarok" -> "playback" -> "Configure Phonon" and do a test of the internal audio I hear the test sound.
Every other application (that I tested9 works normally.

I just reinstalled Kubuntu Xenial because I got a new harddisk and copied my complete home folder to the new installation.
I didn't understand how OakL solved his problem, so I ask again. I have no idea which plugins have to be installed to run amarok (isn't that the task of the packet manager?)

when I start amarok in debug mode and try to start a track I get this on the console.

Code: Select all

amarok: BEGIN: void Playlist::PrettyListView::trackActivated(const QModelIndex&)
amarok:   BEGIN: void Playlist::Actions::play(const QModelIndex&)
amarok:     BEGIN: void Playlist::Actions::play(quint64, bool)
amarok:       BEGIN: void EngineController::play(Meta::TrackPtr, uint, bool)
amarok:         BEGIN: void EngineController::stop(bool, bool)
amarok:         END__: void EngineController::stop(bool, bool) [Took: 0s]
amarok:         [EngineController] play: bounded is  QObject(0x0)  current "Southern Man"
amarok:         [EngineController] Just a normal, boring track... :-P
amarok:         BEGIN: void EngineController::playUrl(const KUrl&, uint, bool)
amarok:           [EngineController] URL:  KUrl("file:///atlas/data/musik/tosho/csny/After The Goldrush/Neil Young - After the gold rush - 04 - Southern Man.mp3") "file:///atlas/data/musik/tosho/csny/After%20The%20Goldrush/Neil%20Young%20-%20After%20the%20gold%20rush%20-%2004%20-%20Southern%20Man.mp3"
amarok:           [EngineController] Offset:  0
amarok:         END__: void EngineController::playUrl(const KUrl&, uint, bool) [Took: 0.009s]
amarok:       END__: void EngineController::play(Meta::TrackPtr, uint, bool) [Took: 0.009s]
amarok:     END__: void Playlist::Actions::play(quint64, bool) [Took: 0.009s]
amarok:   END__: void Playlist::Actions::play(const QModelIndex&) [Took: 0.01s]
amarok: END__: void Playlist::PrettyListView::trackActivated(const QModelIndex&) [Took: 0.01s]
amarok: [EngineController] slotTrackLengthChanged( -1 )
amarok: BEGIN: void ProgressWidget::redrawBookmarks(const QString*)
amarok: END__: void ProgressWidget::redrawBookmarks(const QString*) [Took: 0s]
amarok: [EngineController] slotTrackLengthChanged( -1 )
amarok: BEGIN: void ProgressWidget::redrawBookmarks(const QString*)
amarok: END__: void ProgressWidget::redrawBookmarks(const QString*) [Took: 0s]


I don't see anything special here.

What can I do?

Read the answer with the "accepted" sign next to the title, two comments up from yours, that explains what you need.

No, it did not. There are tons of gstreamer-plugins, and I cannot install everything that exists. My disk space and internet bandwidth is not unlimited.
Anyway I found out that installing gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly was helpful in my case.

There are two questions left, though.
- Why am I supposed to know which weird plugin Amarok (or any other application) needs to work properly? Isn't this the task of the package maintainer?
- why does amarok work for another (new) user.

That's all extremely unsatisfying, and I have no idea who's responsible; the KDE team, the Amarok team, the Kubuntu team...?

this should normally be solved by the distribution, but you have to address this downstream, we do not make packages for release.

As for Amarok working for another user: there might be something in the configuration files of the user that prevent Amarok from working properly, but as for knowing what it is, that would be a wild guess, sorry. You should compare the configuration files of these two users as a start, that might help (provided those are on the same computer with the same distribution and application versions).

Another possible problem can be the group adherence of the user: if it is not part of the user group that gives access to audio this could be a possible cause. Although this is rather unlikely, as all users normally get the same default privileges on creation, so if you or your system administrator did not modify anything there, this is likely not the cause.

Thanks for your explanations,
Just out of curiosity : Could you please explain what you mean by "you have to address this downstream"? I have no idea what "downstream" means as I am not a (Linux) developer.

Comparing the configs might be a good idea. The strange thing is that Amarok worked well on my previously installed Kubuntu 16.04 and now it didn't.
On the other hand the HP printer driver now doesn't cut the top of the pages anymore. It did so with 14.04 and with my first 16.04 installation. Both where fresh installations with only the home directories taken from the old installations. Strange enough.
Even after 15 years of experience Linux is still wonderland to me

Downstream is your distribution, we are the developers but do not make any distribution packages.

What does a printer driver have to do with Amarok?

Mamarok wrote:What does a printer driver have to do with Amarok?

Nothing, off cause It has to do with Linux (or the distribution) in general, just like Amarok.