Bug#1128079: Bug#1128001: libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0: version 2.44.5+dfsg-3 makes volumeicon-alsa fail to work

[Johannes Stezenbach]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2026 at 09:04:13PM +0000, Simon McVittie wrote:
> 
> I've seen indications in other bug tracking systems that volumeicon might
> set SIGCHLD to be ignored. That would be consistent with this symptom: if
> SIGCHLD is explicitly ignored (set to SIG_IGN), then the child process will
> disappear immediately instead of briefly becoming a zombie process,
> therefore it isn't available to be reaped by the parent, and wait4 and
> similar functions will fail with ECHILD, making exit status unavailable.

Thanks for the explanation, tricky stuff!

> I couldn't find evidence of volumeicon ignoring this signal in codesearch,
> but perhaps some library that it uses that ignores this signal, rather than
> volumeicon itself?

volumeicon itself does it:

https://github.com/mati75/volumeicon-debian/blob/master/src/volumeicon.c#L1330

Presumably because it can spawn an external mixer,
the default is "xterm -e 'alsamixer'".


Thanks,
Johannes