Version: 4.5 (using KDE 4.6.1) OS: Linux When starting the computer from a cold boot with pulse audio enabled causes the KDE 4.6.1 desktop to freeze for 10-15 seconds before the desktop becomes responsive and the login sound is produced. This only happens on a cold boot. Any future logout and logins after fist boot work as expected. I did not experience this delay with KDE 4.6.0 desktop. It sounds like KDE 4.6.1 is killing the existing pulse audio server then re-spawning it causing the delay. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Enable pulse audio and do a cold boot.
Even a kill and restart of the PA Server shouldn't cause 10-15 seconds of lockup - more like 1-2s max - so I'd say something else is going on. You say that it doesn't happen except on first login? Can you perhaps try logging out, then logging in quickly on a text terminal and type "pulseaudio -k" then logout and then try a graphical login again. This should basically simulate the state of PA on a cold boot (normally after logging out the PA daemon will stay alive for a minute or two in case it's needed again before committing suicide). Alternatively, just wait a couple minutes after logging out to let the PA daemon die before logging back in again. Does the same delay come back under either of the above circumstances?
Yes it does the same thing but I just found what is causing it. The pulseaudio-kde.desktop file in the /etc/xdg/autostart folder from our pulseaudio-module-x11-0.9.22 package. If I remove the desktop file from the autostart folder everything starts properly. pulseaudio-kde.desktop calls start-pulseaudio-kde.
Args, it is still intermittent so I'll keep digging around to see what changed between KDE 4.6.0 and 4.6.1.
Tested PA with KDE 4.6.1 on standard sata system and everything is ok. The intermittent problem may be due to a timing issue since that system boots from a ssd drive. I am going to start clean with an updated ISO on the ssd drive just to make sure something isn't boogered somewhere.
If there is a timing issue, I wouldn't be overly surprised, but I don't get one on my SSD here (tho' not tested 4.6.1 yet... and I have a patch that changes how knotify outputs sound - so not a great test bed really!) I have had some suspicion of a startup timing issue for a while but it should not result in a delay - it's more a case of miss-detecting that PA had started and falling back to ALSA mode.... perhaps this could trigger a code path that does lead to a delay tho'....
Removed 3 different desktop files on my system related to pulse and no more delays.
I wonder why these would cause problems. Certainly one of the .desktop files is needed for proper interaction with KDE (otherwise you'll get what I call "degraded mode" in System Settings -> Multimedia: see http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/KDE for screenshots). Certainly, 10-15s delay should not be a result of this :s It would be interesting to get further debugging but it's quite hard to capture that data during login without affecting the issue itself :s