Latest Ubuntu Karmic fail - Rhythmbox won't play (but again, it's easily fixed)
I've had more than a little trouble with all things GNOMEish in Ubuntu 9.10 since upgrading from 9.04. I've solved all of the issues thus far but discovered another last night.
Rhythmbox, which wouldn't even start until I fixed the opencv bug, started but wouldn't play anything. When trying to play an audio file, I kept getting an error message that included this line: "unable to start playback pipeline."
That was enough to send me to Google, where I found the bug (#468577) in Launchpad. I happen to have a Launchpad account (which I created when I bought a shirt and hat from the Ubuntu online store), and I was able to add my solution to this 9.10 (Karmic) bug. I remember seeing this solution (albeit with one critical detail missing) somewhere on the Web but can't remember where.
Here it is:
If you upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10, can't play audio files in Rhythmbox and get the following message in a dialog box — "unable to start playback pipeline," you can fix the problem by removing Rhythmbox and then reinstalling it. I used the Synaptic Package Manager but apt or Aptitude will work just as well.
I first just reinstalled Rhythmbox without removing it beforehand. That didn't work.
Once I removed Rhythmbox and then reinstalled it, the app was and is able to play audio files.
Point of order: Other audio applications in Ubuntu 9.10 worked the whole time; only Rhythmbox was affected. Mousing over audio files in Nautilus produced audio. Before I fixed the Rhythmbox problem, I installed Exaile, which played audio with no problem.
Parting shot: I've had more issues with the 9.04-9.10 upgrade than with any other in the recent past (not counting my two attempts to do an in-place upgrade of OpenBSD that broke the installation completely). The fixes have been relatively easy, but there has been too many of them.
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The problems I am having since upgrading to 9.10 is that:
1. the sound is muted every time I start my computer and I have to manually turn it on. I've checked the settings and they are OK.
2. My cd drive will not mount with a music cd (original). Data disks work correctly. It's only.cda files that the drive won't see. My MP3s from my iPod mount correctly and Rhythembox plays them with no problems.
I have checked in the forums at launchpad without any success.
Also I forgot:
3. Wireless card (Belkin) would not work. Usually I just have to use the windows .inf file but with this release I had to do some major research to get what I needed to fix the problem.
Don't mean to complain on your blog but I just needed to vent.
I used to have a problem with sound muting every reboot. This was with a Mac G4 running Debian Etch.
I ended up adding a line to one of the boot scripts (probably /etc/rc.local) that loaded my ALSA settings every time. I don't know how this would work in the PulseAudio era, but perhaps there's something similar.