I've come to the conclusion that my recent upgrade to 4.2 is faulty. The very first clue was when my attempts at using System Settings yielded various errors (which I previously wrote about); I solved them by copying the missing files from another computer, although it was still running 4.1.

Anyway, I'm now looking at all sorts of strange and flaky behavior. For example, last night when I left my laptop, the Luna widget was happily sitting in my panel; when I got up this morning its icon had changed into a large red square with a white X; right-clicking on it yielded choices to configure or remove this "unknown widget." I tried installing/uninstalling several panel widgets, all with the same result. There are other issues, too, but the point is that it's clear there's something not right with my installation.

I've already tried reinstalling 4.2 via Adept, but the results are the same. FWIW, I followed the instructions here, http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kde-4.2 for upgrading on Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10).

How can I repair a broken installation?

Maybe your system has an out of date repository:

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apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

bcooksley wrote:Maybe your system has an out of date repository:

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apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

I was pretty sure that wasn't the problem, but I ran the above anyway...no change.

It really looks like an incomplete/corrupt installation of 4.2, but I don't know how to repair it.

Possibly maybe try force upgrading all packages that fit this description: *qt* | *kde*

Well, I think it's fixed...but there are still some issues.

To fix it, I manually (from a command line) removed everything related to KDE, then I ran:

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apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Things are pretty much back to normal now, e.g., the red and white X icons are gone and widgets act normal again. But I have no sound in gnubg (backgammon). I used to, but it disappeared during the flakiness issue and it's still gone now. I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling it, but to no avail. If I play it under GNOME, I have sound, so it's definitely something KDE related.

Anyway, thanks for the help and suggestions!

You may need to select the appropriate Phonon backend ( System Settings > Multimedia )
The Xine backend is recommended.

bcooksley wrote:You may need to select the appropriate Phonon backend ( System Settings > Multimedia )
The Xine backend is recommended.

I just double checked to make sure it was still set on Xine, and it is. I'm stumped. Any other ideas? This is a trivial problem, really, but I got used to the neat sound effects while playing and I'd like to have them back [in KDE]!

Some other application is probably using the sound system. Therefore gnubg cannot play its sounds. This is probably an application such as Flash, or KNotify. Is DMix correctly configured on your system?

Interesting. I wonder what might be interfering with gnubg's use of the sound system. I can't recall adding or removing anything recently that would account for the sudden lack of sound in gnubg, but maybe I did.

I tried killing off knotify and then trying gnubg again, but with the same results. And then knotify comes right back--what the heck is it, anyway? :undecided:

Also, I can't recall ever hearing/knowing about DMix before. A little Googling took me to various ALSA-related pages, but since I never even knew about DMix before, I don't see how there's any connection with my problem...but I'm not ruling anything out!

bcooksley, I really appreciate your help on this, especially since it's probably not even related to my original, now-solved problem!

I ran the tests in #2 on this page: http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/Dmix# ... _alsa_with:

and everything worked as expected.

I don't know what else to try.

KNotify is responsible for performing actions on certain events. Applications mostly use it for Error / Information dialogs. Applications will automatically respawn it, so you usually have to kill it repeatitively for it to stay dead.

You may wish to check for processes such as Pulseaudio.

EDIT: Having a look at its dependencies, it probably uses ESD in GNOME, and can use aRtS in KDE 3. However it has no option for Phonon at this time...

I'm not seeing anything running that's related to pulseaudio. Any ideas what other sound-related processes I might check for that may be conflicting with gnubg?

Also, I want to make sure you don't lose sight of the chronology: Sound did work in gnubg using KDE, and then stopped inexplicably. All other sound-producing apps (other games, my mail client, CD players, startup/shutdown sounds, etc.) that I've checked are working fine.

EDIT: I'm looking at its dependencies right now to see if I can figure out why gnubg's sound stopped. I see libesd-alsa0 (>= 0.2.35) | libesd0 (>= 0.2.35) but nothing else that appears sound-related.

I have no idea. The only thing that usually uses sound in KDE are multimedia apps, browsers ( flash ) and KNotify. Other than that I am out of ideas. Maybe try with a new account to rule out a bad config.

I had already tried making a new user and logging in with it...same results. Oh well.

Again, I appreciate all your input on this. If anything else comes to you, let me know!

In my quest--which has become something of an obsession!--to figure out the sound problem, I did comparisons of running processes while using Gnome vs KDE.

What stands out are entries like these, which only appear in the "ps -eaf" list for Gnome:

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Xenix1985     6102  6047  0 19:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/ssh-agent
/usr/bin/gpg-agent --daemon --sh
--write-env-file=/home/Xenix1985/.gnupg/gpg-agent-info-HPLaptop
/usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session /usr/bin/pulse-session
/usr/bin/seahorse-agent --execute /usr/bin/gnome-session

Xenix1985     6103  6047  0 19:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/gpg-agent --daemon
--sh --write-env-file=/home/Xenix1985/.gnupg/gpg-agent-info-HPLaptop
/usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session /usr/bin/pulse-session
/usr/bin/seahorse-agent --execute /usr/bin/gnome-session

Xenix1985     6106     1  0 19:23 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/dbus-launch
--exit-with-session /usr/bin/pulse-session /usr/bin/seahorse-agent --execute
/usr/bin/gnome-session

Xenix1985     6110     1  0 19:23 ?        00:00:01 /usr/bin/pulseaudio -D
--log-target=syslog

Xenix1985     6113  6110  0 19:23 ?        00:00:00
/usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/gconf-helper

As you can see there are definitely Pulse-related processes running.

While using KDE, if I go to System | System Settings | Multimedia and 'test' PulseAudio [under any of the audio entries, such as Games] I get this error message:

Notification from Phonon: KDE's Multimedia Lib

The audio playback device PulseAudio does not work.
Falling back to HDA NVidia (CONEXANT Analog).

I DEFINITELY do have PulseAudio (and a lot of related items) installed, which I just double-checked in Synaptic. So--it appears to me--PulseAudio not only works in Gnome but is also RUNNING in Gnome, whereas it's neither running nor working in KDE. I've narrowed it down that much, but now I'm at a loss. :-O

Pulseaudio is generally only started by distribution autostarts. Now I know why gnubg isn't working. It will be trying to use libesd to play sounds, which usually just passes it through to Pulseaudio now. You have two choices:

1) Get gnubg to use Xine somehow.
2) Get pulseaudio to run under KDE.

Regarding number 2, you can probably add a script that executes "pulseaudio &" to $KDEHOME/Autostart.