[SOLVED] Broken Audio System

[Yoru3]

Looks like I've broken my Linux Lite audio system.
What I did was

sudo apt-get install grilo-plugins-0.2
sudo apt-get install rhythmbox

Which worked great on lubuntu 14.1 LXDE  (after installing missing basics gcc, make and samba).
Got it playing music from a Windows XP based Twonky media server.

But I tried the same thing on Linux Lite, I found I'd lost the sound.
So I removed the grilo plugin and rhythmbox.

But now, when vlc is invoked on a terminal, I get the following

VLC media player 2.1.4 Rincewind (revision 2.1.4-0-g2a072be)
[0x9ebf6c8] pulse audio output error: PulseAudio server connection failure: Timeout
[0x9e378f8] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
Gtk-Message: (for origin information, set GTK_DEBUG): failed to retrieve property `GtkRange::activate-slider' of type `gboolean' from rc file value "((GString*) 0xb010aab0)" of type `GString'
Gtk-Message: (for origin information, set GTK_DEBUG): failed to retrieve property `GtkRange::activate-slider' of type `gboolean' from rc file value "((GString*) 0xb010aab0)" of type `GString'
[0x9f98310] main playlist: stopping playback
ALSA lib pulse.c:243pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Timeout

[0x9ebf6c8] alsa audio output error: cannot open ALSA device "default": Connection refused
[0x9ebf6c8] main audio output error: module not functional
[0xaf46f3f0] main decoder error: failed to create audio output

When the VLC window finally appears and I try and play, get the following in VLC error window

Audio output failed:
The audio device "default" could not be used:
Connection refused.

Not sure what the best way forward is now.
I'd like to get vlc, pulseaudio and alsa working again, without distroying the Linux Lite.
But I'd also like to get rhythmbox working on Linux Lite with the grilo plugin, to get the same link up with the Twonky server, as is possible with lubuntu.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[altman]

Wonder if you remove both of them @ reinstall them back on wath it would do .

Is that a fresh install & whats the computer please , it might help you knowing the hardware .

Someone will be able to give you a hand .

[Yoru3]

I definitely removed both of them. In fact I actually did
sudo apt-get --purge remove  xxx

I was thinking of doing

sudo apt-get --reinstall install alsa

Then maybe the same for pulseaudio, if there's no improvement. But like I say, I don't want to end up
destroying Linux Lite.

Is there something fundamentally incompatible about rhthmbox on Linux Lite xfce , which I understand was originally intended for gnome.

The PC in question is a home brew PC using
ASUS E35M1-I mini ITX
with 6GB memory
4.75TB disk
2 Blueray recordables
running Window 7 64 bit professional SP1
running VMware Player
running Linux Lite 2.2.3 32bit

[altman]

Ok , did some work in there . Thanx for the hardware . Nice pc there . I understand your concerns , been destroying my installs since been on Linux for the last 7-8 years ! lol


I guess that you really want Rythmbox installed in there , Clementine s doing a pretty good job on my end & you can install it from LL Installer .

[Yoru3]

I entered
sudo apt-get --reinstall install alsa
and got

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'alsa-base' instead of 'alsa'
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  i965-va-driver libao-common libao4 libcec2 libgdata-common libgdata13
  libgoa-1.0-0b libgoa-1.0-common libgssdp-1.0-3 libgupnp-1.0-4
  libgupnp-av-1.0-2 liblockdev1 libmediaart-1.0-0 libmicrohttpd10 libnfs1
  liboauth0 libpcrecpp0 libshairplay0 libshairport1 libssh-4 libtinyxml2.6.2
  libtracker-sparql-0.16-0 libva-glx1 libva-intel-vaapi-driver libvdpau1
  python-bluez ttf-dejavu-core
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 151 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/main alsa-base all 1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu4 [151 kB]
Fetched 151 kB in 0s (226 kB/s)
(Reading database ... 118234 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../alsa-base_1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu4_all.deb ...
Unpacking alsa-base (1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu4) over (1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu4) ...
Setting up alsa-base (1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu4) ...

But still no sound

So I entered
sudo apt-get --reinstall install pulseaudio
and got

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree     
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  i965-va-driver libao-common libao4 libcec2 libgdata-common libgdata13
  libgoa-1.0-0b libgoa-1.0-common libgssdp-1.0-3 libgupnp-1.0-4
  libgupnp-av-1.0-2 liblockdev1 libmediaart-1.0-0 libmicrohttpd10 libnfs1
  liboauth0 libpcrecpp0 libshairplay0 libshairport1 libssh-4 libtinyxml2.6.2
  libtracker-sparql-0.16-0 libva-glx1 libva-intel-vaapi-driver libvdpau1
  python-bluez ttf-dejavu-core
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 645 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/main pulseaudio i386 1:4.0-0ubuntu11 [645 kB]
Fetched 645 kB in 0s (661 kB/s)   
(Reading database ... 118234 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../pulseaudio_1%3a4.0-0ubuntu11_i386.deb ...
Unpacking pulseaudio (1:4.0-0ubuntu11) over (1:4.0-0ubuntu11) ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-16) ...
ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot
Processing triggers for man-db (2.6.7.1-1ubuntu1) ...
Setting up pulseaudio (1:4.0-0ubuntu11) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.19-0ubuntu6.4) ...

VLC now works again and produces music sound ouput.

Not sure what the libs are.

This time I'll install rhythmbox first.

rhythmbox reinstalled and both vlc an rhthmbox produce music sound output.

installed grilo-plugins-0.2  via synaptic package manager, since it was listed, which also installed libgrilo-0.2.1

However,although both vlc and rhthmbox play local mucic okay, rhthmbox does not list the grilo plugin in tools.
Is this because I used synaptic, which doesn't seem to know about rhthmbox.

Should I deinstall the plugin using synaptic, and try installing with apt-get, although I seem to recall It didn't appear in rhythbox tools when the system was broken.

It seems that the plugin is going to the wrong place, which means I can't get upnp network server music.

As a BTW although local music is now okay, I seem to have lost the machine sounds ie. login and logout etc.

In summery, pulseaudio was broken and reinstalling seems to have fixed it.
But the rhythmbox plugin seems to be either going to the wrong place, or is associated incorrectly.

where are these plugins supposed to go.

[Valtam]

Try this instructional - http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2014...untu-1404/ for plugin/s installation.

[altman]

I would also do in Terminal some cleanup , such as these commands :


sudo apt-get clean ; sudo apt-get autoclean : sudo apt-get autoremove


As you seem to have some cleanup to do . might help a little bit .

Did it work by the way !

[Yoru3]

Thanks for the input Jerry.

I initially had started following this link, since it explained the problem,
http://bernaerts.dyndns.org/linux/74-ubu...lna-client
but the links and info appeared to be unreliable.

I also initially thought the link you provided was not relavent, because the list of plugins did not include the all important grilo Upnp/DLNA  client (renderer and controller) plugin.
To my mind this is an essential prerequisite of a good music player, since it allows effort to be focused on maintaining the quality of the one central store all of which is made available to all networked devices, (PC, tablet, digital radio, phone etc.) rather than a just a hodge podge of local files on each device.

But then I found another link, which not only highlights the issue, but gives a full solution that includes the grilo plugin. Again it's fossfreedom.

http://xpressubuntu.wordpress.com/2014/0...a-support/

It sounded very possitive, so I thought I'd just follow the instructions.
However, I had also by this time installed another rhthmbox PPA (the webupd8team), so I first unticked it's box in the 'Software & Upates, Other Software' to prevent ambiguity.

Just for good measure I did the following, to prove the package could not be seen.
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:webupd8team/rhythmbox

Then I did
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossfreedom/rhythmbox
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rhythmbox
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install grilo-plugins-0.2 grilo-plugins-0.2-mediascanner

After ticking the 'Tools, Plugins' box for grilo, the result was a fully working Rhythmbox v 3.1 app, which seems to be quite robust,
with a very large music library.

Only thing to fix now is the system sound, which I seem to have lost along the way earlier.
This was still working when the music sound was broken, so I guess it's based on a different system.

[Yoru3]

Just to finish of the link, I finally got the system sound going, but only by starting again with a new install. Despite best efforts I just got deeper and deeper and went round and round with the original.

This may have been in part due to the Vmware virtualisation, but also the result of a somewhat 'delicate' Linux audio system, with many moving parts. Originally the Linux system believed the host audio was HD Intel Audio, which was close, but probably not close enough for all the moving parts to work simultaneously. It's actually AMD HDMI Output, AMD High Definition Audio.

So with a new machine this time Linux Lite declare that that output was not supported, and disconnected the audio. Try try again, I set the virtual audio output to 'auto detect', and got my system audio when logging in. Further investigation showed that between Linux Lite and Vmware, they had now decided that my audio hardware was Creative Sound Blaster, Audio PCI64v, Audio PCI 128. Whatever. It now works on Rhythmbox, VLC and system sound.

After all this it seems to me that audio is one Linux's biggest Achilles heels. As this brilliant article puts it,

“you end up with a melting pot of instability with as much potential for destruction as the San Andreas fault. “

http://tuxradar.com/content/how-it-works...ained#null

Hopefully someone out there is thinking about a unified audio system for Linux.

Anyway, second time around installation seemed to go much smoother.  Although I'm sure the terminal text actually said Linux Lite 2.0 when I was doing an Install Updates, and the whisker menu was not populated with the items that had their boxes ticked. Other than that it's turbines to steam.

[altman]

Thanx for reporting this , hope everything goes well sound wise !

Any hints people !