576365 - Thunderbird 3.1 won't play sound ( 3.0.5 works fine!!!)

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Preferences, defect)

Description

[egon.olsen100]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; pl-PL; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100627 Firefox/3.6.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; pl-PL; rv:1.9.2.4) Gecko/20100624 Thunderbird/3.1

Thunderbird 3.1 won't play *.wav files. 
No sound at all, no matter default notification sound or custom *.wav file.  

Error code in the Thunderbird console 

Błąd: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsISound.play]"  nsresult: "0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame :: chrome://messenger/content/preferences/general.js :: anonymous :: line 94"  data: no]


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
just clean installation (a new profile created every time)

Comment 1

[Zimmer]

I can confirm this problem.

Thunderbird 3.0.5 works fine with any WAV file.
Thunderbird 3.1 does not produce any sound.
I am using the "famous" notify.wav taken from Windows.

No messages from the terminal.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

bug 534033 comment 15 mentions seeing this in 3.1 but not 3.0. but the rest of that bug predates 3.1 - as does bug 551460

Comment 3

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

What sound driver system are you guys using ?

Anything in the console when you launch ./thunderbird (instead of using menu shortcuts) ?

Comment 4

[egon.olsen100]

(In reply to comment #3)
> What sound driver system are you guys using ?
> 
> Anything in the console when you launch ./thunderbird (instead of using menu
> shortcuts) ?

I use alsa present in 2.6.34 (now it's 2.6.34.1). I tested thunderbird 3.1 on sound blaster X-Fi xtreme gamer and motherboard integrated sound card (HD audio codec) as well. The result always is the same NO SOUND. The other apps works flawlessly, thunderbird 3.0.5 too with some minor issue.   
Maybe it's another bug but Thunderbird 3.0.5 had problem play "all wav" files. Many of them them were played partially only. But I was able to solve 
that problem choosing "the right" sound to play. But in 3.1 no sound at all pain in the neck :(. 

Text console remain without any error messages.
Just Thunderbird - Tools - Error Console shows the error.

Comment 5

[Zimmer]

(In reply to comment #3)
> What sound driver system are you guys using ?
> 
> Anything in the console when you launch ./thunderbird (instead of using menu
> shortcuts) ?

Modern Linux distributions contain all sound drivers (ALSA, ESD, OSS, etc).
I am using ALSA and Thunderbird 3.1 is the only program that can not play sounds.

I also tried to change the audio backend of Phonon (Xine, GStreamer, etc), but nothing changes

The terminal does not display error messages.

Comment 6

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Are those wave file playable in Firefox 3.5.x ?

Comment 7

[Zimmer]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Are those wave file playable in Firefox 3.5.x ?

Yes.

They are also playable in Firefox 3.6.6 and Seamonkey 2.0.x

Comment 8

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Can you share one of these files with us ?

Comment 9

[egon.olsen100]

Attachment: notification sound 1

Comment 10

[egon.olsen100]

Attachment: notification sound 2

Comment 11

[egon.olsen100]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Can you share one of these files with us ?

I just sent you two notification sounds. 
Of course both sounds won't play in Thunderbird 3.1 under linux.
Thunderbird 3.0.5 (linux) can play only typewriter.wav (no problem), the other sound file mail.wav can be played only partially just "the very binging" milliseconds and then silence :(.
  
(Under windows Vista both sounds plays flawlessly no matter Thunderbird 3.0.5 or 3.1)

Comment 12

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Wolfgang, thoughts ?

Comment 13

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

The exception above is common when no esound daemon is running on the system.
Thunderbird's notification wav support is only cabable of using libesd. On newer Linux releases the libesd apparently doesn't do autospawning anymore (what was the case in the past).
What doesn't fit into the picture is that seamonkey and firefox reportedly work but nsISound.play() is doing the same there.
At least I would check if an esd process is running on the system when trying to play notifications.

Comment 14

[Zimmer]

@Wolfgang Rosenauer 

Actually, if I first run esd and then thunderbird (3.1), the notification sound works!

The strange thing however is that the sound notifications work seamlessly with Thunderbird 3.0.5, even when no esd daemon is running.

Comment 15

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

That issue is also reported in bug 536996 but still should also affect FF 3.6.x.

There is also a regression candidate (which is basically the only difference between TB 3.0 and 3.1 but looks quite correct itself.

For now to resolve your issue please check your /etc/esd.conf and look for
auto_spawn=0 and change it to 1 in that case. Check again with that.

Up to now I have not seen any evidence that any code change in nsISound really broke something which cannot be explained by esd not running.
libesd is not able to play any sound w/o a sound server. This can either be esd or the pulseaudio esd interface.

Comment 16

[Hartmut Figge]

(In reply to comment #15)

> There is also a regression candidate (which is basically the only difference
> between TB 3.0 and 3.1 but looks quite correct itself.

For me on SM 2.1 Linux trunk nightlys the backout of patch v1 of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=479929 helps. I have mentioned that in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=536996#c38 but couldn't test, if that also helps for TB 3.1. I am only compiling SM 2.1. ;)

Comment 17

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

I still don't get why it would change things. Quite confusing.
During more testing I just did I found that it's apparently not required to have esd running in every case:
- tried TB notification -> not working
- started esd, tried TB -> working
- killed esd, tried TB -> still working
- restarted TB -> not working

So apparently esd hands some socket to TB which can be used to feed some WAV into the sound system directly which only gets lost when TB is quit.

BTW: auto_spawn=1 doesn't work on my system (openSUSE 11.2) but rcesound start does.

Comment 18

[egon.olsen100]

> BTW: auto_spawn=1 doesn't work on my system (openSUSE 11.2) but rcesound start
> does.

I tried auto_spawn=1 and it also doesn't work to me (Slackware64 13.1).

I got ESD running in the "background" (put this in startup scripts)(ps ax shows clearly there's ESD up&running) but TB 3.1 -> not working  
but!!! after I started ESD inside xterm (regular user) TB 3.1 -> working!!! PROGRESS :)) 

I agree it's a bit "strange" until 3.1 all other versions of TB worked
without ESD daemon hmmm...

Comment 19

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

Ok, I did some more tests and I'm now convinced that bug 479929 broke it and is bogus by itself. I've reopened it now.

Comment 20

[Sasafrass]

I'm having the same issue, using PCLOS. Is there a simple solution to this?

Comment 21

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Marking as blocking to ensure we get the fix in bug 579877 into the next stability update.

Comment 22

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

I've got a flag set on bug 579877 to make sure we get that in for 3.1.3. Therefore I'm resolving this as fixed for 3.1.2 as we have the patch in for those builds.

Comment 23

[egon.olsen100]

I just compiled and installed Thunderbird 3.1.2 under Slackware64 13.1. Can confirm that the sound notification works fine again, hurray!!!. 
Good job!!! thank you :)))).

Comment 24

[Zimmer]

I also confirm that the sound notification works perfectly with Thunderbird 3.1.2 (even when the ESD daemon is not running).

Thank you very much.