Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gnome: No sound - "No volume control GStreamer plugins and/or devices found" (was: rhythmbox plays silently)

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Tuesday 25 March 2008, Michael Schmarck wrote:
> I wrote:
> > Andrey Falko <ma3oxuct <at> gmail.com> writes:
> > > On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 3:40 PM, Michael Schmarck
> > > <michael.schmarck <at> habmalnefrage.de> wrote:
> >
> > There's another problem: When I start gnome-volume-control, I get:
> >
> >   No volume control GStreamer plugins and/or devices found
> >
> > Hmm...
>
> [...]
>
> > > Also does
> > > rhythmbox use alsa or oss?
> >
> > I suppose alsa - I set USE=-oss in make.conf. How do I check?
> > gst-plugins-alsa is NOT installed.
>
> That's it!
>
> On my new system, I'm using Xfce; on other systems I used to use
> Gnome. I suppose Gnome pulls in gst-plugins-meta which may pull in
> gst-plugins-alsa. Xfce doesn't do that (of course).
>
> After installing gst-plugins-meta (and gst-plugins-alsa), I'm able
> to hear something.
>
> Nice!
>
> Andrey, thanks for your suggestions - they made me solve the problem.

Something's wrong there:

alan@nazgul ~ $ equery depends -a gst-plugins-alsa
[ Searching for packages depending on gst-plugins-alsa... ]
media-libs/gst-plugins-base-0.10.14 (alsa? 
>=media-plugins/gst-plugins-alsa-0.10)
media-plugins/gst-plugins-meta-0.10 (alsa? 
>=media-plugins/gst-plugins-alsa-0.10)
media-plugins/gst-plugins-meta-0.10-r1 (alsa? 
>=media-plugins/gst-plugins-alsa-0.10)
<snip irrelevant stuff>

alan@nazgul ~ $ equery depends -a gst-plugins-meta
[ Searching for packages depending on gst-plugins-meta... ]
gnome-base/control-center-2.20.3 (media-plugins/gst-plugins-meta:0.10)
media-video/totem-2.22.0 (>=media-plugins/gst-plugins-meta-0.10-r1)

alan@nazgul ~ $ equery depends -a gst-plugins-base
[ Searching for packages depending on gst-plugins-base... ]
<snip HUGE list...>
media-sound/rhythmbox-0.10.1-r1 (>=media-libs/gst-plugins-base-0.10)
media-sound/rhythmbox-0.11.2-r1 (>=media-libs/gst-plugins-base-0.10.11)


Looking into ebuilds, it would appear that gst-plugins-meta used to have 
alsa and oss USE flags. The most current version doesn't, so you either 
have to emerge gst-plugins-alsa manually or emerge gst-plugins-meta to 
get alsa support. Which seems really odd as the vast majority of users 
will have alsa or oss.

Perhaps you could file a feature request at b.g.o. to get the old 
behaviour back. It seems entirely reasonable to me that rhythmbox 
should DEPENDs on gst-plugins-base which should conditionally DEPEND 
on -alsa or -oss (or other sound systems). Unless rhythmbox can serve 
up over the network that is, in which case local hardware support might 
not be needed.



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

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