Kmix causes whole desktop to hang on login

[x-shaney-x]

As stated, the desktop hangs and I cannot launch anything until kmix finally appears in the tray.
When I try, I just get the busy cursor thing then the app will suddenly start as soon as kmix appears.
If I log out then back in again, kmix actually takes MUCH longer to start (generally up to 2 minutes but has gone up to 20).

It all works fine on a fresh install and if I delete ~/.kde then it starts up instantly next login but as soon as I start to set the desktop up to my liking the problem comes back.
Really, as soon as I start fiddling with things, even though they are seemingly completely unrelated, such as changing fonts or disabling some of the desktop effects or altering the size of the panel.
As soon as I make any changes whatsoever it hangs next time I login.

I'm using a fresh kubuntu "proper" 13.04 install (as opposed to installing kubuntu-desktop from ubuntu) on an Acer 5742G laptop with all Intel hardware.
Dolphin also hangs on startup and when I use the right-click menu, not sure if it could be related or not.
Other than that all other aspects of kubuntu are fine and everything else is lightning fast (once kmix starts).

If I run kmix from a console it starts instantly and I get this:

$ kmix
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
QDBusConnection for control created "/Mixers/PulseAudio__Playback_Devices_1/alsa_output_pci_0000_00_1b_0_analog_stereo" 
QDBusConnection for control created "/Mixers/PulseAudio__Capture_Devices_1/alsa_input_pci_0000_00_1b_0_analog_stereo" 
shane@Acer:~$ QDBusConnection for control created "/Mixers/PulseAudio__Playback_Streams_1/restore_sink_input_by_media_role_event" 
X Error: BadPixmap (invalid Pixmap parameter) 4
  Major opcode: 54 (X_FreePixmap)
  Resource id:  0x260006a
X Error: BadPixmap (invalid Pixmap parameter) 4
  Major opcode: 54 (X_FreePixmap)
  Resource id:  0x2600061
X Error: BadPixmap (invalid Pixmap parameter) 4
  Major opcode: 54 (X_FreePixmap)
  Resource id:  0x2600058
X Error: BadPixmap (invalid Pixmap parameter) 4
  Major opcode: 54 (X_FreePixmap)
  Resource id:  0x260004f

I have no idea where to go from here but I cannot continue to use kubuntu with this issue (or indeed, the dolphin one).

[dmeyer]

As stated, the desktop hangs and I cannot launch anything until kmix finally appears in the tray.
When I try, I just get the busy cursor thing then the app will suddenly start as soon as kmix appears.
If I log out then back in again, kmix actually takes MUCH longer to start (generally up to 2 minutes but has gone up to 20).

It all works fine on a fresh install and if I delete ~/.kde then it starts up instantly next login but as soon as I start to set the desktop up to my liking the problem comes back.
Really, as soon as I start fiddling with things, even though they are seemingly completely unrelated, such as changing fonts or disabling some of the desktop effects or altering the size of the panel.
As soon as I make any changes whatsoever it hangs next time I login.

I'm using a fresh kubuntu "proper" 13.04 install (as opposed to installing kubuntu-desktop from ubuntu) on an Acer 5742G laptop with all Intel hardware.
Dolphin also hangs on startup and when I use the right-click menu, not sure if it could be related or not.
Other than that all other aspects of kubuntu are fine and everything else is lightning fast (once kmix starts).

If I run kmix from a console it starts instantly and I get this:

$ kmix
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
QDBusConnection for control created "/Mixers/PulseAudio__Playback_Devices_1/alsa_output_pci_0000_00_1b_0_analog_stereo" 
QDBusConnection for control created "/Mixers/PulseAudio__Capture_Devices_1/alsa_input_pci_0000_00_1b_0_analog_stereo" 
shane@Acer:~$ QDBusConnection for control created "/Mixers/PulseAudio__Playback_Streams_1/restore_sink_input_by_media_role_event" 
X Error: BadPixmap (invalid Pixmap parameter) 4
  Major opcode: 54 (X_FreePixmap)
  Resource id:  0x260006a
X Error: BadPixmap (invalid Pixmap parameter) 4
  Major opcode: 54 (X_FreePixmap)
  Resource id:  0x2600061
X Error: BadPixmap (invalid Pixmap parameter) 4
  Major opcode: 54 (X_FreePixmap)
  Resource id:  0x2600058
X Error: BadPixmap (invalid Pixmap parameter) 4
  Major opcode: 54 (X_FreePixmap)
  Resource id:  0x260004f

I have no idea where to go from here but I cannot continue to use kubuntu with this issue (or indeed, the dolphin one).

Standard procedure. Try these commands:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

followed by

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Reboot and try again.

[Rog131]

About KMix

At here the restoring of the KMix with the Kubuntu 13.04 / KDE 4.10.2 did slow the KDE start a bit (about 5 seconds - not much but when you are staring the screen...).

The fix at here was to remove the kmix from the autostart.

The package kmix is installing:

:~$ dpkg -L kmix | grep autostart

/usr/share/autostart/restore_kmix_volumes.desktop
/usr/share/autostart/kmix_autostart.desktop

I did remove the /usr/share/autostart/kmix_autostart.desktop.

The KDE is restoring the kmix as I have in the KDE System Settings > Startup and Shutdown > Session Mangement: On Login - Restore previous session.

The KMix blog: http://kmix5.wordpress.com/

Other options

The KMix is an option it isn't the only option - http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=116676

The Veromix is available from the Ubuntu repositories (plasma-widget-veromix) and from the 'Add Widgets' plasmoid installer (it is a script).



There is also the alsamixer: man alasamixer

NAME
alsamixer - soundcard mixer for ALSA soundcard driver, with ncurses interface

SYNOPSIS
alsamixer [options]

[x-shaney-x]

Thanks for the suggestions. I believe I have possibly discovered the problem.
I the only common factor I could think of was that I set the applications menus to show as a titlebar button before anything else.

So I changed it back to "in application" and after several logins and reboots kmix has behaved.
I set it back to titlebar button and next login it was playing up again.
If I set the menus to show as a desktop menubar then kmix is hit and miss but never starts instantly.
Put them back in application and starts instantly again.

If I add a panel and add the menubar widget then kmix again behaves.
So not sure exactly what the connection is but it certainly seems related to the application menu option (hidden kmix window, perhaps?).

[x-shaney-x]

As an experiment I deleted .kde once more then changed the application menu to titlebar button again and did nothing else at all.
Logged out and back in and got the kmix delay so definitely that I reckon.

It didn't solve the issue of dolphin hanging on startup though but removing kio-mtp did. Anyone know what that specific package effects? Presumably it will stop me browsing my phone in dolphin?

[Rog131]

This bug report: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58758 is suggesting that the pulseaudio start is slowing some KDE system start.

[jlittle]

As an experiment I deleted .kde once more then changed the application menu to titlebar button again and did nothing else at all.
Logged out and back in and got the kmix delay so definitely that I reckon.

I have the problem, which doesn't occur with an uncustomized user, but I don't recognize "application menu to titlebar button" as something I use.

Regards, John Little

[SteveRiley]

but I don't recognize "application menu to titlebar button" as something I use.

[x-shaney-x]

After suffering from a corrupt partition (another story altogether) I am currently running on a brand new Kubuntu 13.04 install and once again running into this problem.
Once again, just disabling all appmenus makes kmix start instantly...

[jlittle]

I'm still experiencing this problem. If I "disable all appmenus" by setting "menubar style" to "title bar button" the problem doesn't go away, and I don't get the title bar button! (Some apps need access to the menu bar, though where there's an in-app function to turn it off, f.ex. konsole, I usually turn it off, but want it back sometimes.)

It's definitely kmix; it stalls from about 2 to 30 s while loading itself into the tray, and if I click on anything, such as the K menu, the whole lot stalls until kmix sorts itself out. I have the time with seconds in the panel, and it freezes.

The bug report referred to by Rog131 is a bug report for pulseaudio, but I agree with one of the posters that the problem has a KDE origin. I've applied the workaround implied by the bug's title, to add

NotShowIn=KDE

to /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop, and it does indeed get rid of the delay. This means some pulseaudio modules don't get loaded, and the consequences of that are way beyond me; I'll continue to watch for problems. I am getting occasional crashes of random KDE components at the time kmix is in strife, but there's no pattern and I'm not sure they're related.

Regards, John Little

[andrewsimpson]

The bug in https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58758 seems to be the issue. However the bug report is a bit vague about what is being done...

However in the Pulseaudio-discuss mailing list is the patch to solve the problem. The mail thread starts here and gives three patch files.

I have tried applying the patch to the Raring source package for Pulseaudio and it almost applies cleanly. There are two chunks in zeroconf-publish.c that don't patch because of other changes in the git tree since Ubuntu grabbed the files. I don't have the knowledge to work around this, so I have given up.

I see that Puseaudio 4.0 has just been released with the patched files, so maybe that will provide the solution, once it gets packaged. I'm not sure how feasible it is to build Pulseaudio 4.0 and have it 'just work'. or whether Ubuntu patch it heavily.