Upgrade of libasound2 to 1.0.16 on xubuntu 8.04 desktop causes many applications to 'hang'

You said you experienced this problem with firefox, and you also experienced it with other applications. What other applications caused a problem?

Things that don't work (that is, they cannot be used).

firefox
seamonkey 2.0 pre A
sol
gnomine
GNU Chess

Thing that locks the desktop so badly that CTRL-ALT-Backspace is needed

GNUSound

Things that can be used

Thunderbird
OpenOffice
Any of the qt stuff I have loaded (e.g. qgo, kstars, scribus)
An old build of seamonkey I keep in case the nightly doesn't work (the last pre-XUL build)

In the latter case, I get no sound out of the mplayer plug-in.

In fact, I don't appear to have any sound out of anything.

I got to 8.0.4 by upgrading a release at a time from 6.06, and accepting all updates when they became available.

I'm having the same problem with Firefox 3 on Kubuntu 8.04. Also seems to be related to ESD. If I start FF in GDB and break it during the "hang" I get this backtrace:

#0 0xb7f70410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#1 0xb7f51c38 in connect () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0
#2 0xb5f5174a in ?? () from /usr/lib/libesd.so.0
#3 0xb5f51e82 in esd_open_sound () from /usr/lib/libesd.so.0
#4 0xb625ff66 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libgnome-2.so.0
#5 0xb625ff87 in gnome_sound_connection_get () from /usr/lib/libgnome-2.so.0
#6 0xb634bb45 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libgnomeui-2.so.0
#7 0xb6c41b20 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#8 0xb6c43916 in g_signal_emit_valist () from /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#9 0xb6c43c59 in g_signal_emit () from /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#10 0xb6969837 in gtk_widget_show () from /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
#11 0xb7810418 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
... (blah blah blah libxul.so)
#28 0xb76bd89e in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#29 0xb7112688 in XRE_main () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#30 0x08049033 in ?? ()
#31 0xb7ce4450 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#32 0x08048cc1 in ?? ()

FF2 works fine. FF3 worked fine when I first installed the initial release of 8.04 (actually I think I started with a beta) but an update about 3 weeks ago broke it.

Hm I also just noticed that I am using libasound2 1.0.15-3ubuntu4, not 1.0.16.

According to the Gnome library documentation.

"These functions also allow for the fact that no sound may be supported on the current platform. So applications can safely call these functions to play sounds and they will just quietly return if no action is possible.

    .
    .

gnome_sound_connection_get ()

int gnome_sound_connection_get (void);

Rarely needed to by programs directly, this function may be useful if a program has cached a sample with gnome_sound_sample_load() and now wishes to call esd_sample_play() to play the sample.

Returns : the file descriptor of our esound connection or -1 on error."

In my case, there is no esd on the system, and AFAIK there never has been.

So this function ought to return immediately, as the documentation states.

But it does not.

Surely this is a wrong.

I have now found that /desktop/gnome/sound/enable_esd was true on my system. Odd since there is no esd,

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /desktop/gnome/sound/enable_esd false

has fixed sol.

However, firefox still hangs.

(gdb) where
#0 0xb7fd2410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#1 0xb7fa7c38 in connect () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0
#2 0xb5f7074a in ?? () from /usr/lib/libesd.so.0
#3 0xb5f70e82 in esd_open_sound () from /usr/lib/libesd.so.0
#4 0xb786c314 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#5 0xb7933781 in NS_InvokeByIndex_P () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#6 0xb71872bb in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#7 0xb718d06d in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#8 0xb7c6c176 in js_Invoke () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libmozjs.so
#9 0xb7c5f0ef in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libmozjs.so
#10 0xb7c6c1c5 in js_Invoke () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libmozjs.so
#11 0xb718494c in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#12 0xb71800c5 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#13 0xb7934290 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#14 0xb7923b12 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#15 0xb7923871 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#16 0xb7179370 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#17 0xb7933781 in NS_InvokeByIndex_P () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#18 0xb71872bb in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#19 0xb718d06d in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#20 0xb7c6c176 in js_Invoke () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libmozjs.so
#21 0xb7c5f0ef in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libmozjs.so
#22 0xb7c6c1c5 in js_Invoke () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libmozjs.so
#23 0xb718494c in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#24 0xb71800c5 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#25 0xb7934290 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#26 0xb7923b12 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#27 0xb7923871 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#28 0xb7179370 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#29 0xb7933781 in NS_InvokeByIndex_P () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#30 0xb71872bb in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#31 0xb718d06d in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#32 0xb7c6c176 in js_Invoke () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libmozjs.so
#33 0xb7c5f0ef in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libmozjs.so
#34 0xb7c6c1c5 in js_Invoke () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libmozjs.so
#35 0xb718494c in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#36 0xb71800c5 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#37 0xb7934290 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
-#38 0xb743c64d in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#39 0xb743c9de in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#40 0xb74531d7 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#41 0xb74533a2 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#42 0xb7453c9e in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#43 0xb72bf5b9 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#44 0xb769f2f9 in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#45 0xb76a9eac in ?? () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/libxul.so
#46 0xb76a1897 in ?? () from /usr/...

The command

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /desktop/gnome/sound/enable_esd false

has fixed seamonkey 2.0 pre A.

Firefox is actually improved somewhat, since it works properly after the connect() has timed out.

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /desktop/gnome/sound/event_sounds false

has no effect.

The problem is now fixed. It turns out that the Loopback Network Interface wasn't working properly. I came to realise that any attempt to access anything via 127.0.0.1 or localhost was hanging for an extended period. 'ifup lo' told me I had a duplicate command at line 16 of /etc/network/interfaces. The line wasn't a duplicate (it said 'manual ppp0') but I took it out and hey presto, ifup lo didn't give me an error, and everything works.

I checked into this and I found a typo in /etc/networks, fixing it fixed Firefox. Annoying problems like this are why bug #1 is still open...

Make that /etc/network/interfaces, thats where I had a typo.