[Bug 85791] Re: Amarok loops through all songs when the sound device isn't unavailable

[Siegfried Gevatter (RainCT)]

** Summary changed:

- when sound hardware fails, amarok locks the computer trying to play all songs in playlist
+ Amarok loops through all songs when the sound device isn't unavailable

** Description changed:

  Binary package hint: amarok
  
- This is rather unpleasant issue.
- 
- I'm having some problems with pulseaudio, which means that occasionally
- the sound hardware goes down and Amarok receives an error from Xine.
- This is not Amarok's fault. The problem is that when that happens,
- Amarok displays a warning message, but instead of stopping it keeps
- trying to play each track in the playlist in turn.
+ When Amarok tries to play a song but the sound device is unavailable
+ (another program is using it) Amarok will try to loop through all the
+ tracks in the playlist, becoming very irresponsive.
  
  Each time a track starts playing Amarok hogs the processor -- I assume
  it starts building the 'track info' panel and even decoding the file
  before it notices the sound doesn't work. So it moves to the next file
- and again hogs the processor. The result is that (a) nothing works on my
- computer anymore until it finishes the playlist and (b) I can't turn
- Amarok off until it finishes the playlist (because it didn't allow me to
- press any buttons, and I couldn't even start a terminal or switch to a
- console; and it was a looong playlist). I suppose if I had auto-repeat
- on I would need to restart the computer. This is double-weird as I have
- a Core Duo processor and low-latency kernel...
+ and again hogs the processor.
  
- Note that I have had the same problem with Amarok with different causes
- (i.e., external drive failed, etc). So I see it as a general issue,
- rather than just the 'sound hardware doesn't work'.
- 
- I think Amarok should stop trying to play things automatically when it
- detects the same error consecutively for a few times, until it receives
- user direction.
- 
- Also, this is a bit of an Ubuntu problem too, as it amounts to a nice
- denial of service technique. Would it be possible to dynamically nice a
- normal-priority process that has been using up 90% of the processor for
- the last second or so? (Excepting, perhaps, root processes and maybe
- higher-than-normal priority processes.) The point is, you should be able
- to at least move to a console and start a terminal to kill an aberrant
- process.
+ Amarok should stop trying to play things automatically when it detects
+ the same error consecutively for a few times, until it receives user
+ direction.

-- 
Amarok loops through all songs when the sound device isn't unavailable
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/85791
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