STEPS TO REPRODUCE Here's how to reliably break the media keys (pause/play/forward/backward): Start Audacious and play an audio stream. https://ice6.somafm.com/dronezone-128-aac Look up the IP of the audio stream host and use it to null route. host ice6.somafm.com ice6.somafm.com has address 208.64.184.36 Block the IP of the stream. sudo ip route add blackhole 208.64.184.36/32 Wait for player buffer to flush and stream to stop playing. Quit/kill player while it's waiting for the stream to restore. Clear the null route. sudo ip route del 208.64.184.36/32 Start Audacious again and play the stream. ctrl+alt+l to lock screen. Media controls are now missing and don't work. Do this whole procedure a second time and media keys are now broken in KDE proper. OBSERVED RESULT Media player control keys are now broken until system reboot. Restarting sddm/kwin/x11 is not enough. Restarting dbus also didn't fix it. I'm not sure what would fix this. It's outside my skill/knowledge area. EXPECTED RESULT Media player keys should not break. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS I am on KDE 5.27.2 on Debian Unstable, last full system upgrade on 20230317. Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 12 KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.2 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.103.0 Qt Version: 5.15.8 Kernel Version: 6.1.0-6-amd64 (64-bit) Graphics Platform: X11 This problem first started some time in the last year, maybe six months back, but it could have been anywhere from 12-6 months that I think this bug was first noticed. I first documented having the problem on 2022-09-15, but my previous system upgrade was back on 2022-05-16, per my documentation. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION There is a reddit thread on what I think might be the same issue here: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/sy8uuj/media_controls_randomly_stop_working/ This might be similar to Bug 418288.
Tonight I tried to reproduce the issue in a virt-manager VM on the current KDE Neon testing but was unable to do so. The issue is 100% reproducible on my desktop system. There are some differences in versions of KDE and audacious between each. I will see if there is anything specific that I might be able to narrow this down to. I've done a little searching on the MPRIS server. That looks exactly like where the problem might be, but I have no idea how to debug that.
I created a VM clone of my system, reproduced the bug, then upgraded, and now I can't reproduce it in the VM anymore. I will upgrade my system ASAP. Whatever this was, I think it's fixed now. I am going to close this out.