Ubuntu

Xubuntu 8.10: lost sound control icon

Asked by Paul

Hey everyone,

I just migrated to Xubuntu 8.10 and everything seemed to work fine. For one day at least. Then for no reason whatsoever I lost my tray icon for the sound control.

What is worse, I cannot seem to get it back. I have tried "right-mouse click on panel » Add new item » Volume control" several times for both my lower and upper panel, but the icon does not return.

Also tried rebooting the system several times and I have all the latest Xubuntu updates that I am aware of. I really hope that someone can help me, because it is really annoying not being able to see your sound settings.

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Sam_ (and-sam) said : 		#1

Hi,
if there is a volume control in a menu like applications -> sound+video or system -> preferences, you may open the main menu and pull it to the panel; alike creating a starter for the panel.

About the menu
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundVideoDefault

Off course the app has to be installed to use it, so you may check within Synaptic about gnome volume control or pulse audio volume control.

Maybe there is an error message in the .xsession-errors (hidden in your home directory) which gives a hint why the applet doesn't show up.

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Paul (treepata) said : 		#2

Hey Sam (and others),

sorry for my absence, was travelling a lot for work these days and didn't have much time to look at this issue more clearly.

I looked in the Settings Manager of Xubuntu and the Synaptic Package Manager, and I understand now that I use the "XFCE-mixer" as a sound config. utility (which makes sense, as I use Xubuntu).

I tried reinstalling that programme (and rebooting the laptop) but that didn't work. The sound tray icon is still lost and I have no way to figure out what my sound settings are.

Looking at my .xsession-errors file (never knew such a file existed, quite useful!) gave the following details;

The program 'xfce4-mixer-plugin' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadAccess (attempt to access private resource denied)'.
  (Details: serial 204 error_code 10 request_code 33 minor_code 0)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)
** Message: Volume Control: screen changed: 0

However, being a newbie to Xubuntu, I have no idea what to do with this report. Anybody knows what to do?

On a (maybe) related note, I have since 3 weeks ago lost almost all the sound for my laptop. I can only put it as far as 10% (my guess). Anything higher causes a high-pitched sound which could create deafness after 30 sec. When booting up under Win XP (still use this when I have to give a presentation as beamer support under Xubuntu isn't good) the sound works fine.

Thanks a lot!

Revision history for this message
Sam_ (and-sam) said : 		#3

Hi,
this is obviously a known bug with some workarounds described here
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-mixer/+bug/90261

Revision history for this message
Paul (treepata) said : 		#4

Ah, that is great info! I couldn't find that before, so thanks for pointing that out.

Consider my question answered.