Bug#705368: rhythmbox: can't get it to play anything, no matter what

[Toni Mueller]

Package: rhythmbox
Version: 2.97-2.1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

I cannot get rhythmbox to play anything at all. I procrastinated with
error reporting because I thought it was a user error (ie, my own
fault), but now I consider the idea that it might not be me, after all.

So, here goes:


When I fire up rhythmbox, I get a number of error messages, and when I
try to play something, eg. an internet radio stream which plays fine in
vlc, or a local .mp3 file, it bails out with an obscure popup alert,
stating "Couldn't start playback", and, in a new line, "Internal data
flow error".

The error messages on the console are


(rhythmbox:23361): Rhythmbox-WARNING **: Could not open device /dev/radio0

(rhythmbox:23361): Rhythmbox-WARNING **: Unable to grab media player keys: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.gnome.SettingsDaemon was not provided by any .service files

(rhythmbox:23361): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_value_get_uint: assertion `G_VALUE_HOLDS_UINT (value)' failed
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/rhythmbox/plugins/im-status/im-status.py", line 112, in playing_entry_changed
    self.set_entry (entry)
  File "/usr/lib/rhythmbox/plugins/im-status/im-status.py", line 141, in set_entry
    self.set_status_from_entry ()
  File "/usr/lib/rhythmbox/plugins/im-status/im-status.py", line 158, in set_status_from_entry
    self.set_status ()
  File "/usr/lib/rhythmbox/plugins/im-status/im-status.py", line 162, in set_status
    'artist': unicode (self.current_artist, encoding='utf-8'),
TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, NoneType found
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/rhythmbox/plugins/im-status/im-status.py", line 127, in playing_song_property_changed
    self.set_status ()
  File "/usr/lib/rhythmbox/plugins/im-status/im-status.py", line 162, in set_status
    'artist': unicode (self.current_artist, encoding='utf-8'),
TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, NoneType found

(rhythmbox:23361): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_value_get_uint: assertion `G_VALUE_HOLDS_UINT (value)' failed



I actually guess that these messages are completely unrelated, and that
I might be not hitting a bug in rhythmbox, but in Pulseaudio instead, as
no other sound related function works properly as well (I can only have
one instance of vlc at a time, and nothing else), but I presently have
no better idea about how and where to report a bug after spending the
net worth of several days in terms of debugging and configuration
options (so feel free to re-assign).



Kind regards,
--Toni++



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (100, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages rhythmbox depends on:
ii  dbus                             1.6.8-1
ii  gnome-icon-theme                 3.4.0-2
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-base       0.10.36-1.1
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-good       0.10.31-3+nmu1
ii  gstreamer0.10-x                  0.10.36-1.1
ii  libatk1.0-0                      2.4.0-2
ii  libc6                            2.13-38
ii  libcairo-gobject2                1.12.2-3
ii  libcairo2                        1.12.2-3
ii  libffi5                          3.0.10-3
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0               2.26.1-1
ii  libgirepository-1.0-1            1.32.1-1
ii  libglib2.0-0                     2.33.12+really2.32.4-5
ii  libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0  0.10.36-1.1
ii  libgstreamer0.10-0               0.10.36-1.1
ii  libgtk-3-0                       3.4.2-6
ii  libice6                          2:1.0.8-2
ii  libjson-glib-1.0-0               0.14.2-1
ii  libpango1.0-0                    1.30.0-1
ii  libpeas-1.0-0                    1.4.0-2
ii  librhythmbox-core6               2.97-2.1
ii  libsm6                           2:1.2.1-2
ii  libsoup-gnome2.4-1               2.38.1-2
ii  libsoup2.4-1                     2.38.1-2
ii  libtdb1                          1.2.10-2
ii  libtotem-plparser17              3.4.2-1
ii  libxml2                          2.8.0+dfsg1-7+nmu1
ii  media-player-info                17-1
ii  rhythmbox-data                   2.97-2.1
ii  zlib1g                           1:1.2.7.dfsg-13

Versions of packages rhythmbox recommends:
ii  avahi-daemon                                    0.6.31-2
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly                      0.10.19-2+b2
ii  gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio                        0.10.31-3+nmu1
ii  gvfs-backends                                   1.12.3-4
ii  notification-daemon                             0.7.6-1
ii  plasma-widgets-workspace [notification-daemon]  4:4.8.4-6
ii  rhythmbox-plugins                               2.97-2.1
ii  yelp                                            3.4.2-1+b1

Versions of packages rhythmbox suggests:
ii  gnome-codec-install          0.4.7+nmu1
ii  gnome-control-center         1:3.4.3.1-2
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad    0.10.23-7.1
ii  rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder  2.97-2.1

-- no debconf information