bug#45109: GNOME: unable to change alert "beep" sound since staging merge

bug#45109: GNOME: unable to change alert "beep" sound since staging merge

[Mark H Weaver]

Since the recent merge of the 'staging' branch into 'master' on 28 Nov
2020, I'm no longer able to configure the alert sound in GNOME.  That's
a pity, since I find the default "drip" sound extremely unpleasant.

In more detail:

To configure the alert sound, I first open GNOME Settings by clicking on
the gear icon in the pull-down menu on the right side of GNOME Shell's
top bar.  From there, I navigate to the "Sound" section and scroll to
the bottom of that section, where I'm given a choice of 4 options for
the "Alert Sound".

For as long as I can remember, and even today, this pane *does* remember
my preferred Alert Sound (sonar), and correctly highlights it as my
selected choice.  However, the default "drip" sound is the one that is
actually used by applications, e.g. by GNOME Terminal and Emacs.

Note that even before the recent staging merge, periodically (maybe once
a week or so), I would log in and find that the dreaded "drip" sound was
being used as my alert sound.  Each time, I was able to fix it by going
back to the Sound section of GNOME Settings, and clicking again on my
preferred alert sound (although it was already selected as my configured
alert sound).  Now, since the recent staging merge, that no longer
works.

If anyone can suggest a way to successfully change my alert sound, I
would be grateful.

       Mark

bug#45109: GNOME: unable to change alert "beep" sound since staging merge

[Marius Bakke]

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Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> skriver:

> Since the recent merge of the 'staging' branch into 'master' on 28 Nov
> 2020, I'm no longer able to configure the alert sound in GNOME.  That's
> a pity, since I find the default "drip" sound extremely unpleasant.

There were not a lot of GNOME-related changes in that merge.  From a
quick glance of...

  git shortlog --format='%h %s' --no-merges -n fe5c9051cc..e827f40479

...a likely culprit is:

  62df18d305 gnu: dconf: Update to 0.36.0.

Can you check if reverting it makes a difference?

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bug#45109: GNOME: unable to change alert "beep" sound since staging merge

[Bengt Richter]

Hi Mark,

On +2020-12-07 18:36:10 -0500, Mark H Weaver wrote:
> Since the recent merge of the 'staging' branch into 'master' on 28 Nov
> 2020, I'm no longer able to configure the alert sound in GNOME.  That's
> a pity, since I find the default "drip" sound extremely unpleasant.
>
I find it annoying too -- thanks for nudging me to change it ;)

It looks like a brute force "fix" -- while waiting for a proper one --  would be
to substitute another ogg file for drip.ogg.
(or just switch the names on drip.ogg and sonar.ogg, if you don't want to fiddle further).

$ find /usr -iname '*drip*'
/usr/include/X11/dri/xf86driproto.h
/usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/drip.ogg
/usr/share/pkgconfig/xf86driproto.pc
/usr/lib/libreoffice/share/gallery/environment/DrippingFaucet.png

]$ file /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/*
/usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/bark.ogg:  Ogg data, Vorbis audio, stereo, 48000 Hz, ~192000 bps, created by: Xiph.Org libVorbis I (1.2.0)
/usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/drip.ogg:  Ogg data, Vorbis audio, stereo, 44100 Hz, ~192000 bps, created by: Xiph.Org libVorbis I (1.2.0)
/usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/glass.ogg: Ogg data, Vorbis audio, stereo, 44100 Hz, ~192000 bps, created by: Xiph.Org libVorbis I (1.2.0)
/usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/sonar.ogg: Ogg data, Vorbis audio, stereo, 44100 Hz, ~192000 bps, created by: Xiph.Org libVorbis I (1.2.0)


> In more detail:
> 
> To configure the alert sound, I first open GNOME Settings by clicking on
> the gear icon in the pull-down menu on the right side of GNOME Shell's
> top bar.  From there, I navigate to the "Sound" section and scroll to
> the bottom of that section, where I'm given a choice of 4 options for
> the "Alert Sound".
>
To find where a change of alert sound is stored, a script of mine will
touch a file (~/.wha-time) for later use with find, to find files in a
directory tree modified (-c option) since ~/.wha-time).

So I did "wha -t" to do the touch, chose a new sound in settings, exited, and
then "wha -c ~/" resulted in the following (it echoes the find command just before doing it):

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
find /home/bokr/ -cnewer /home/bokr/.wha-time -print0 | xargs -0 ls -ladc --time-style=+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S
drwx------  2 bokr bokr   4096 2020-12-08 07:52:13 /home/bokr/.cache/babl
-rw-r--r--  1 bokr bokr    495 2020-12-08 07:52:13 /home/bokr/.cache/babl/babl-fishes
drwx------  2 bokr bokr   4096 2020-12-08 07:52:13 /home/bokr/.cache/libgweather
-rw-r--r--  1 bokr bokr    687 2020-12-08 07:52:13 /home/bokr/.cache/libgweather/soup.cache2
drwxr-xr-x  2 bokr bokr   4096 2020-12-08 07:52:15 /home/bokr/.config/dconf
-rw-r--r--  1 bokr bokr  33852 2020-12-08 07:52:15 /home/bokr/.config/dconf/user
drwx------ 32 bokr bokr   4096 2020-12-08 07:52:25 /home/bokr/.local/share
drwxr-x---  5 bokr bokr   4096 2020-12-08 07:52:12 /home/bokr/.local/share/epiphany
-rw-r--r--  1 bokr bokr    941 2020-12-08 07:52:12 /home/bokr/.local/share/epiphany/bookmarks.gvdb
-rw-r--r--  1 bokr bokr  32768 2020-12-08 07:52:15 /home/bokr/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/home-776cc71e.log
-rw-------  1 bokr bokr 115799 2020-12-08 07:52:25 /home/bokr/.local/share/recently-used.xbel
drwx------  2 bokr bokr   4096 2020-12-08 07:52:39 /home/bokr/.local/share/sounds/__custom
lrwxrwxrwx  1 bokr bokr     47 2020-12-08 07:52:39 /home/bokr/.local/share/sounds/__custom/bell-terminal.ogg -> /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/bark.ogg
lrwxrwxrwx  1 bokr bokr     47 2020-12-08 07:52:39 /home/bokr/.local/share/sounds/__custom/bell-window-system.ogg -> /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/bark.ogg
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Apparently my selection of "bark" is stored as links in
    ~/.local/share/sounds/__custom/

Perhaps this is a change of preference persistence method that all parts of
your system have not gotten updated to?

> For as long as I can remember, and even today, this pane *does* remember
> my preferred Alert Sound (sonar), and correctly highlights it as my
> selected choice.  However, the default "drip" sound is the one that is
> actually used by applications, e.g. by GNOME Terminal and Emacs.
> 
> Note that even before the recent staging merge, periodically (maybe once
> a week or so), I would log in and find that the dreaded "drip" sound was
> being used as my alert sound.  Each time, I was able to fix it by going
> back to the Sound section of GNOME Settings, and clicking again on my
> preferred alert sound (although it was already selected as my configured
> alert sound).  Now, since the recent staging merge, that no longer
> works.
> 
> If anyone can suggest a way to successfully change my alert sound, I
> would be grateful.
> 
>        Mark

You could just make all 4 files dupes of sonar.ogg ;))

I am afraid that kind of "fix" becomes more and more tempting ;/

I still don't know what the proper fix for your observed prolem is, sorry.
But HTH :)

-- 
Regards,
Bengt Richter

bug#45109: GNOME: unable to change alert "beep" sound since staging merge

[Mark H Weaver]

Hi Marius and Bengt,

Thanks very much for your suggestions.  I initially tried Marius's idea
to revert the dconf update, which seemed to work, but now I find that
I'm unable to reproduce the problem, even with my original
post-staging-merge system where I first encountered it.

I'm not sure what happened here, but I'm closing this bug.
Sorry for the noise.

        Mark

bug#45109: GNOME: unable to change alert "beep" sound since staging merge

[Mark H Weaver]

reopen 45109
thanks

Earlier, I wrote:
> I initially tried Marius's idea to revert the dconf update, which
> seemed to work, but now I find that I'm unable to reproduce the
> problem, even with my original post-staging-merge system where I first
> encountered it.

I spoke too soon.  Now the problem is happening again, after another
system upgrade and reboot.  I don't have time right now to investigate
further, but I'm reopening the bug.

     Thanks,
       Mark

bug#45109: GNOME: unable to change alert "beep" sound since staging merge

[Bengt Richter]

Hi Mark, and who may be interested,

On +2020-12-14 19:11:51 -0500, Mark H Weaver wrote:
> reopen 45109
> thanks
> 
> Earlier, I wrote:
> > I initially tried Marius's idea to revert the dconf update, which
> > seemed to work, but now I find that I'm unable to reproduce the
> > problem, even with my original post-staging-merge system where I first
> > encountered it.
> 
> I spoke too soon.  Now the problem is happening again, after another
> system upgrade and reboot.  I don't have time right now to investigate
> further, but I'm reopening the bug.
> 
>      Thanks,
>        Mark

The same happened again to me -- i.e., my alert sound preference got reset.
This was after a pureos (debian based) update.
uname -a =-> Linux LionPure 4.19.0-13-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.160-2 (2020-11-28) x86_64 GNU/Linux

man 7 dconf =-> mentions that gsettings wraps unstable api gconf, so I poked
a little, but no time right now. HTH someone else go further :)

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ gsettings list-recursively |egrep 'sound|beep'
org.gnome.desktop.sound input-feedback-sounds false
org.gnome.desktop.sound theme-name '__custom'
org.gnome.desktop.sound allow-volume-above-100-percent false
org.gnome.desktop.sound event-sounds true
org.gnome.rhythmbox.plugins seen-plugins ['fmradio', 'mpris', 'daap', 'rb', 'artsearch', 'replaygain', 'webremote', 'lyrics', 'dbus-media-server', 'im-status', 'rblirc', 'notification', 'grilo', 'audioscrobbler', 'soundcloud', 'sendto', 'mtpdevice', 'pythonconsole', 'ipod', 'magnatune']
org.gnome.desktop.a11y.keyboard slowkeys-beep-press false
org.gnome.desktop.a11y.keyboard bouncekeys-beep-reject false
org.gnome.desktop.a11y.keyboard slowkeys-beep-reject false
org.gnome.desktop.a11y.keyboard feature-state-change-beep false
org.gnome.desktop.a11y.keyboard slowkeys-beep-accept false
org.gnome.desktop.a11y.keyboard stickykeys-modifier-beep false
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

As you recall from previously (here I've re-selected sonar.ogg :),
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ find ~/ -name '*__custom*'
/home/bokr/.local/share/sounds/__custom
$ find ~/ -name '*__custom*'|xargs ls -l
total 4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bokr bokr 48 Dec 17 08:52 bell-terminal.ogg -> /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/sonar.ogg
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bokr bokr 48 Dec 17 08:52 bell-window-system.ogg -> /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/sonar.ogg
-rw-r--r-- 1 bokr bokr 61 Dec 10 12:11 index.theme
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

BTW, do you or anyone know if there is a CRUD[1]-log that can be enabled,
to log *EVERY* CRUD change to any persistent storage during system
(debian in this case) updates? That can't be a new idea ;)
(Maybe it's hard in the context of something signed that runs privileged
to do updates before rebooting to grub? )

Also, is there a standard policy somewhere for preserving/migrating content state
when installing a replacement storage box for the content?

If it is too much work to write migration code when storage internals or apis
change, couldn't it just be policy to mark the old box as box.old_NNN instead
of deleting/overwiting it, and emit (and log) a simple hint?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delete

-- 
Regards,
Bengt Richter

bug#45109: GNOME: unable to change alert "beep" sound since staging merge

[Mark H Weaver]

Hi Marius,

Marius Bakke <marius@gnu.org> writes:

> Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> skriver:
>
>> Since the recent merge of the 'staging' branch into 'master' on 28 Nov
>> 2020, I'm no longer able to configure the alert sound in GNOME.  That's
>> a pity, since I find the default "drip" sound extremely unpleasant.
>
> There were not a lot of GNOME-related changes in that merge.  From a
> quick glance of...
>
>   git shortlog --format='%h %s' --no-merges -n fe5c9051cc..e827f40479
>
> ...a likely culprit is:
>
>   62df18d305 gnu: dconf: Update to 0.36.0.
>
> Can you check if reverting it makes a difference?

Reverting that update does seem to have fixed the problem.  I've been
running my Guix system with dconf-0.34 since you made this suggestion
last December, and the problem where I'm *unable* to change my GNOME
alert sound has never happened since.  (It still occasionally resets to
the default "drip" alert sound, as I noted in my original report, but at
least I can change it back easily).

I will soon switch back to dconf-0.36 to see if the problem returns.

     Thanks,
       Mark

bug#45109: GNOME: unable to change alert "beep" sound since staging merge

[Mark H Weaver]

Earlier, I wrote:
> I will soon switch back to dconf-0.36 to see if the problem returns.

Shortly after switching back to dconf-0.36, the problem has indeed
returned.  So, in summary, the problem has *never* happened to me with
dconf-0.34, but happens quite frequently with dconf-0.36.

      Mark