[kdepim-users] Kalarm plays sound -- sometimes

[David Jarvie]

On Wed, January 4, 2012 8:52 pm, James K. Gruetzner wrote:
> Sometimes in kalarm, when the alarm activates, it will play the sound
from the
> associated file.  Sometimes it won't.  I can test a given alarm (using
the Try
> button in the Edit Display Alarm - KAlarm dialog box) several times in a
row, and
> sometimes the music file will play while other times it will be silent.
>
> When running KAlarm from the command line, the following error shows up
when the
> alarm does *not* play:
> -------------------------
> kalarm(25849)/kio (Scheduler) KIO::SchedulerPrivate::doJob: KIO is not
thread-
> safe.
> QObject::startTimer: QTimer can only be used with threads started with
QThread
>         :
> <repeated six additional times>
>         :
> kalarm(25849)/kio (KIOJob) KIO::SimpleJob::doKill:
KIO::FileJob(0x7f7c1001e980)
> This is overkill.
> -------------------------

Can you confirm that these error messages do not appear if the alarm plays?

> (The PID is 25849.  There is an additional error message that occurs
when the pop-
> up window is closed, but that occurs whether or not the sound plays.).
>
> This error occurs with both .mp3 and .ogg files, and with gstreamer,
xine, or VLC
> selected as the Phonon back-end.  When the sound file does not play,
there is no
> indication in the pavucontrol Output Devices tab that the signal is
making it that
> far.
>
> KAlarm 2.4.11
> KDE 4.6.5 (4.6.5)
> Fedora 15
> Dell Optiplex 755 (64 bit)
>
> A coworker has almost an identical set-up (KAlarm/KDE/Fedora) and has no
problem.
> This all leads me to believe that there is a race condition occurring
which is a
> result of some user setting somewhere.

Alas, playing sound files has been the most problematic feature of KAlarm
for a long time. It works fine for many people, but doesn't work for some.

Can you please raise this as a bug at https://bugs.kde.org, and include
the information you have given in your email. It would help if you could
turn debug output on for KAlarm and run it from a terminal window, and
include in the bug report the debug output which appears when it tries to
play the sound file. (To turn debug output on, run 'kdebugdialog
--fullmode' and set the appropriate settings in the kalarm entry (5950).)

> ---------
> P.S.  There is also a problem of KAlarm freezing when in the "Sound
File" dialog
> box (where one assigns a sound file) whenever I press the little
floppy-disc symbol
> to a file selection dialog box .  It produces the following error
message:  -----
> -----
> QObject::startTimer: QTimer can only be used with threads started with
QThread).
> -----
> I don't think that is related, but it might be, so I included it here.

As you suspect, this is very unlikely to be related to the first problem.
Can you please clarify - does it freeze after you click the button which
displays the file selection dialog? Does the file selection dialog appear.
Is the dialog frozen?

-- 
David Jarvie.
KDE developer.
KAlarm author - http://www.astrojar.org.uk/kalarm

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