F44 Rhythmbox - no playback - assertion ‘GST_IS_ELEMENT' failed

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1

I’ve recently dnf upgraded to F44 from F43. Using cinnamon on wayland (as my previous cinnamon on x was starting a grey desktop without any icons or bars, and no mouse or keyboard interaction).

When I start rhythmbox, I see my collection on music, and can place items (typically .mp3) into the play queue. But whether I try to play from either Play queue or a Music part of the Library pane, the UI quickly runs through items, changing the icon to a white circle with a dash. No audio plays.

From the terminal and starting a 2 item playlist: $ rhythmbox

failed to open /usr/lib64/dri/hybrid_drv_video.so
Not using hybrid_drv_video.so

** (org.gnome.Rhythmbox3:131068): WARNING **: 15:33:42.852: Could not open device /dev/radio0

(org.gnome.Rhythmbox3:131068): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: 16:17:45.717: gst_bin_add: assertion ‘GST_IS_ELEMENT (element)’ failed

(org.gnome.Rhythmbox3:131068): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: 16:17:45.717: gst_element_link_pads_full: assertion ‘GST_IS_ELEMENT (dest)’ failed

(org.gnome.Rhythmbox3:131068): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: 16:17:45.717: gst_element_link_many: assertion ‘GST_IS_ELEMENT (element_1)’ failed

(org.gnome.Rhythmbox3:131068): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: 16:17:45.765: gst_bin_add: assertion ‘GST_IS_ELEMENT (element)’ failed

(org.gnome.Rhythmbox3:131068): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: 16:17:45.766: gst_element_link_pads_full: assertion ‘GST_IS_ELEMENT (dest)’ failed

(org.gnome.Rhythmbox3:131068): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: 16:17:45.766: gst_element_link_many: assertion ‘GST_IS_ELEMENT (element_1)’ failed

Following a few steps of pulse/gstreamer tests shows I can manually play and hear the same tracks without issue.

Changing Login to a test user with access to the same audio files: and playing tracks in rhythmbox works (they play and audio plays out).

Any ideas on troubleshooting?

2

Are you using gdm to start cinnamon, gdm is known to inject it’s wayland poison into X sessions.

There is a update to address that Making sure you're not a bot!

3

For the gstreamer trash, try

rm ~/.cache/gstreamer-1.0/registry.x86_64.bin
4

This tells me there is something in your users local configs that is interfering with the playback. Either in ~/.local or ~/.config or ~/.cache that is gstreamer related.

The very first time a user launches an app that uses gstreamer it creates the config files it uses in the users home directory tree. The test user seems to have gotten the config for the current gstreamer software while the original user may have older configs related to an earlier version of gstreamer that need removed and replaced.

Try cleaning out all the older gstreamer configs in your users tree then start rhythmbox new so new configs are created.

5

I’ve installed this update, and then remembering to also revert from lightdm back gdm, seems to be OK. Except the screen saver activating while actually typing and moving the mouse (and no amount of typing or mouse will wake it up - turning the display off, then on gets picture back after 15 seconds). Restarted to activate change to display manager. Also had to disable the screen saver (boy is that annoying; lightdm doesn’t have the dodgy screen saver activation).

  systemctl list-unit-files | grep -E '(gdm|sddm|lightdm|lxdm)'
gdm.service      disabled   enabled   
lightdm.service  enabled    enabled
sddm.service     disabled   enabled

  systemctl disable lightdm.service
Removed '/etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service'.

  systemctl  enable  gdm.service
Created symlink '/etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service' → '/usr/lib/systemd/system/gdm.service'.

  systemctl set-default graphical.target
6

This didn’t change things with rhythmbox. I noticed the frshly created .bin was identical in size, but had different contents (vbindiff)to the earlier one (possible just a different order).

7

Also took the gdb + debuginfo path, but other than seeing a lot of threads starting and stopping, when the Assertion occurred, I wasn’t sure how to get the application to stop in the debugger when this occurred.

I did find that sometime (in my full music library), clicking play would cause the issue 7 times, and then there was an actual crash on the 8th item:

...
[New Thread 0x7fff8b7fe6c0 (LWP 22301)]
[Thread 0x7fff8b7fe6c0 (LWP 22301) exited]
[New Thread 0x7fff8b7fe6c0 (LWP 22302)]

(org.gnome.Rhythmbox3:21583): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: 19:23:07.802: gst_bin_add: assertion 'GST_IS_ELEMENT (element)' failed

(org.gnome.Rhythmbox3:21583): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: 19:23:07.802: gst_element_link_pads_full: assertion 'GST_IS_ELEMENT (dest)' failed

(org.gnome.Rhythmbox3:21583): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: 19:23:07.802: gst_element_link_many: assertion 'GST_IS_ELEMENT (element_1)' failed
[Thread 0x7fff8b7fe6c0 (LWP 22302) exited]
**
Rhythmbox:ERROR:../backends/gstreamer/rb-player-gst-multi.c:1251:impl_play: assertion failed: (current != NULL)
Bail out! Rhythmbox:ERROR:../backends/gstreamer/rb-player-gst-multi.c:1251:impl_play: assertion failed: (current != NULL)

Thread 1 "rhythmbox" received signal SIGABRT, Aborted.
__pthread_kill_implementation (threadid=<optimized out>, signo=signo@entry=6, no_tid=no_tid@entry=0) at pthread_kill.c:44
⚠️ warning: 44	pthread_kill.c: No such file or directory
Missing rpms, try: dnf --enablerepo='*debug*' install python3-libs-debuginfo-3.14.5-1.fc44.x86_64
(gdb)

The suggested debuginfo install fails (missing package).

I didn’t make any further progress this way.

8

Just noticed another issue which shows up with Cinnamon on GDM, but not on lightdm: The task bar running application show only the text, not the icon (except for gkrellm) including Notepad Next, firefox, thunderbird, nemo, terminal windows.

9

However, after looking for the Menu to edit preferences/settings whatever, I eventually found on the right hand side an unnamed show menu button, which has Preferences|Plugins. It’s been sometime since I set these up, and had totally forgotten how to do it.

Unchecked all plugins I had enabled, and audio now plays (need to start a new track - pausing, changing an enable then unpausing - did not trigger the issue).

Whittled it down to ReplayGain. With it unchecked, audio playback works !

Anybody able to confirm that ReplayGain enabled also causes the rhythmbox issue ?

Track instantly gets marked with a (-), it skips to the next, and continues doing this, logging 3 of :

GStreamer-CRITICAL **: (time): gst_(*): assertion 'GST_IS_ELEMENT (element)' failed.
10

I just checked rhythmbox and enabled that plugin.
It does not cause any errors for me when playing mp3 audio files.

11

To debug this, set the environment variable G_DEBUG=fatal-criticals, then follow my stack trace instructions to get a stack trace.

Also, heads-up: Rhythmbox is FTBFS and will be retired from Fedora because it depends on grilo and grilo-plugins, both of which have been retired.