Rhythmbox: November 2009 Archives

I'm not all that upset about the way Ubuntu 9.10 has been notifying users about upgrades to the system with the Update Manager popping up on the screen whenever it seemingly feels like (as opposed to showing an icon on the upper panel in versions before 9.04), but I have been semi-regularly using Aptitude in the terminal to check for updates on my own.

I just did one now:

$ sudo aptitude update
$ sudo aptitude upgrade

and got the following output:

The following packages will be upgraded:
apparmor apparmor-utils apport apport-gtk checkbox checkbox-gtk evince
evince-dbg evolution evolution-common evolution-dbg
evolution-documentation-en evolution-plugins gnome-about
gnome-desktop-data gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-murrine hwtest hwtest-gtk
libapparmor-perl libapparmor1 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0 libenchant1c2a
libevdocument1 libevview1 libgnome-desktop-2-11 libgudev-1.0-0
libnautilus-extension1 libpython2.6 libudev0 nautilus nautilus-data
nautilus-dbg python-apport python-problem-report python2.6
python2.6-minimal rhythmbox udev update-manager update-manager-core
41 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 30.4MB of archives. After unpacking 123kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

That's a whole lot of updates. I'm too lazy to check exactly why each individual package is being updated, but the fix for Rhythmbox doesn't appear to resolve the issue for which I've already found the solution (removing and reinstalling the app).

Here's what changed for Rhythmbox:

* debian/patches/05_brasero_burn_xml.patch:
- Fix Brasero project

Other than this, there are a whole lot of GNOME packages being updated. Even the Update Manager itself is being updated in this flurry of patches. I'll confess that the changelog for this package didn't mean a whole lot to me.

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.

I haven't loaded up an IM client since I upgraded from Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic).

But I did today, and neither Pidgin nor the new GNOMEish Empathy would run. (Whether this matters or not, I upgraded from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10, as opposed to doing a reinstall.)

I started both IM clients in the terminal to see if I could determine what the problem might be:

steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$ pidgin
ERROR: Could not load classifier cascade /usr/share/opencv/haarcascades/haarcascade_frontalface_alt2.xml
Illegal instruction
steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$ empathy
ERROR: Could not load classifier cascade /usr/share/opencv/haarcascades/haarcascade_frontalface_alt2.xml
Error re-scanning registry , child terminated by signal
Run 'empathy --help' to see a full list of available command line options.

(empathy:2527): empathy-WARNING **: Error in empathy init: Error re-scanning registry , child terminated by signal
steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$

At least both apps seem to be suffering from the same problem, and luckily there is already a bug (#459940) on it in Launchpad. The bug is for the package opencv, and

According to notes on the bug, other GNOME applications affected by the problem include the Totem video player, the Brasero disc burner and Rhythmbox music player.

I can confirm that on my system, every one of those apps will not run.

I also confirmed that the XML file in question is NOT on my box:

steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$ cat /usr/share/opencv/haarcascades/haarcascade_frontalface_alt2.xml
cat: /usr/share/opencv/haarcascades/haarcascade_frontalface_alt2.xml: No such file or directory

One of the comments in the bug report says:

Thomas DEBESSE wrote on 2009-10-29: #6

seems to appear when installing frei0r-plugins (example: for kdenlive). When removing frei0r-plugins from my karmic I've no error messages at all, and totem (and other apps) runs fine.

Hey, I do have KDEnlive on this laptop. I would've removed the offending plugins package, but I decided first to do a software update to see if Ubuntu's package maintainers took care of the problem.

I opened a terminal and used aptitude to do it:

steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$ sudo aptitude update
[sudo] password for steven:

Reading package lists... Done

(listing of mirrors hit has been removed for brevity)

steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$ sudo aptitude upgrade
W: The "upgrade" command is deprecated; use "safe-upgrade" instead.
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
binutils brasero empathy empathy-doc f-spot libbrasero-media0
libempathy-common libempathy-gtk-common libempathy-gtk28 libempathy30
nvidia-common python python-minimal ubuntu-xsplash-artwork xsplash
15 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 5,715kB of archives. After unpacking 160kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

That seems like it would take care of the problem, but the missing file still hadn't shown up. Would a reboot fix things?

After the software update didn't solve the problem, I decided to go into the Synaptic Package Manager and reinstall the opencv packages, which I guessed were libcv1, libhihgui1 and libcvaux1.

That didn't work either.

The next step would be either removing KDEnlive or the offending package, frei0r-plugins.

I went into Synaptic and removed frei0r-plugins.

Nothing changed.

I reinstalled the three opencv libraries (libcv1, libhihgui1 and libcvaux1).

That worked. I was able to run Pidgin, Empathy (which has a nice dialog that offered to import my Pidgin settings, an offer I accepted), Rhythmbox, Brasero and Totem once again.

And KDEnlive seemed to be working, too. It at least loaded.

Let's review: If Pidgin, Empathy, Rhythmbox, Brasero and Totem are not running on your Ubuntu 9.10 system, first update the box, then use the Synaptic Package Manager to remove frei0r-plugins and reinstall libcv1, libhihgui1 and libcvaux1.

I'm a bit surprised that the software update alone didn't fix the problem. While the fix is easy, it's a little bit of "dependency hell" for a package-management system (apt) that is not supposed to suffer from that particular malady.

While I've solved my X issue and now this in 9.10, I probably should have waited an extra month or so before upgrading so these bugs could be shaken out.

Bug #459940 should be closed eventually, but at present it appears that the removal of the offending package and the replacement of those the offender affected is the way out of this problem.

I do have a Launchpad account (I had to create it in order to buy stuff at the Canonical U.S. shop), and I subscribed to this bug so I can keep an eye on it.

I've seen a lot of comments directed at me and others in regard to reporting bugs, and following this bug is hopefully a step in that direction for me personally as a Ubuntu user.