Re: [gentoo-user] Where is GNOME_MixerAapplet

[Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl>]

Allan Gottlieb schreef:
> Mark Knecht suggests just telling gnome to delete the mixer from my
> panel config and install in manually, which I may well do (thanks
> mark).  

I think that's how I fixed it too-- although the gnome mixer isn't all
that useful as a mixer (compared to alsamixer, or gamixer), it is useful
to be sure that *GNOME* is correctly set up for sound (the mixer acts
like the canary in the mines; if it won't load, or errors with the  'no
device found' business, you can be sure that no GNOME/GTK applications
which normally produce sound, will).

> I am sure I can find some mixer somewhere, but would prefer to
> actually find this one.

Right click on the panel; Add to Panel=>Mixer should be somewhere in the
list; if not, then check in the 'Pre-existing Gnome Packages' section
(but I think it's in the first list).

In any case, very few, if any, of the former gnome-applets seem to be
runnable as commands any more. And the most recent gnome-panel (2.10.2)
is so buggy-- even for GNOME-- that I've had to go back to fbpanel,
which at least doesn't crash all the time due to some problem with the
system notification area... instead of getting better (it used to be
that the panel would crash in the mixer applet all the time, until you
got the GNOME backend straightened out, but after that it was pretty
stable-- no more, it seems). So this problem really could be anything,
but I will say that the mixer applet worked fine once I (working from
memory):

1) went to the GNOME control panel and made sure esd was set to start at
GNOME login, which I believe also needed

2) the esound daemon running in the default runlevel

and then

3) deleted and re-added the mixer applet.

Problem was I didn't really want to be running the Enlightened Sound
Daemon, so I somehow or other reconfigured everything to be ALSA instead
(took esound out of the default runlevel, and *thought* I told GNOME not
to start esd at startup, but it persists in doing so, went to the GNOME
Control Panel=>Multimedia and Sound, and mucked about with the sources
and sinks until I could at least get test sounds), and the mixer applet
continued to work (although the panel itself was notoriously unstable).
If you can follow all that <sigh>... it was a bit of a trial. Hope it's
helpful.

> 
> This seems to be a bug.  Should I file it with gentoo (perhaps bad
> packaging) or with gnome?

This mixer applet issue has been going on a long time... I'd check
Bugzilla first, and see if it has been filed (probably) and what's the
current status (for all I know, Gentoo could be waiting for an upstream
patch, which they usually note in b.g.o. Afaik, the procedure is to file
it with Gentoo, always, and if it's an upstream problem, the gnome
maintainers will pass it forward.

HTH,
Holly
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