Ubuntu

No sound in Gnome (but seems ok in KDE)

Asked by Kymus

For the past number of months, I've suffered from a strange sound issue after upgrading to Intrepid (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/324879?comments=all). Out of desperation, my last resort was to upgrade to Jaunty and see if the magic computer fairy would fix my sound just as magically as it had disappeared. In Gnome, I found no luck, but then I decided to try and see if KDE was any different and to my surprise the sound is fine there. Music will play from MP3 and the regular sounds in KDE play as well. In light of this, I am curious: do I just need to reinstall gnome to perhaps get my sound back?

if yes, then my other questions are:
Is there any risk to my data?
How the heck do I do this, anyhow?

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Guillermo Belli
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Guillermo Belli (glock24) said : 		#1

Your problem may be related to pulseaudio, which is an audio framework Gnome uses, and which is sometimes very problematic. KDE does not use pulseaudio, it uses phonon instead.

Reinstalling gnome (that is all gnome related packages) will not risk your data, as it only changes files in the system, not your user folder.

The problem may be related to bad or corrupted user preferences, so you can try creating a new user and see if audio works in gnome for that new user. If so, the fix is simple as reseting renaming or removing the following folder and files: .gnome2* .gconf* .pulse-cookie .config .local

As I understand, you did an upgrade installation, not a clean install, right? Sometime upgrades go bad and some things break, so I always recommend to do a clean install.

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Kymus (x-kymus-x) said : 		#2

Thank you for your response, Guillermo.

What you said makes sense (why sound works in one but not the other). I tried your suggestion and I was very surprised to see that sound (mp3 in Amarok) played fine as the new user!

In regards to how I fix this, could you give me a bit more detail? I understood "the fix is simple as reseting renaming or removing the following folder and files: .gnome2* .gconf* .pulse-cookie .config .local" for the most part, but, I had a few questions.. Specifically, can I just take these files from the new user and plop them into their appropriate place on my current account?

Alos, you understood correctly, the problem occurred after an upgrade (or really, after turning the computer off for the night after an upgrade and then waking up to no sound; yippie).

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Best Guillermo Belli (glock24) said : 		#3

Sorry if the answer was not clear enough. The files you need to move, rename or delete (it is better to rename or move, in case something goes wrong) are in your home folder.

Log out of the graphical session, log into a console, create a "backup" folder and move the gnome preferences there:

cd ~
mkdir backup
mv -t backup .gnome2* .gconf* .pulse-cookie .config .local

After this, log back into your gnome session, a fresh set of preferences should be created, and hopefully your audio will work.

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Kymus (x-kymus-x) said : 		#4

Everything seems to be functional now, thank you very much for your help :)

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Kymus (x-kymus-x) said : 		#5

Thanks Guillermo Belli, that solved my question.