I have not found the real source of the problem, but I have found out
why it worked on other machines and not on this one: some months
(years?) ago I made this i386 machine use `firefox-esr:amd64` because
Firefox tabs kept crashing (even for fairly simple pages).
[ I've been using the i386 version of `firefox-esr` without problem on
other machines, so I don't know why it crashed on this one, but
switching to the amd64 version did "solve" the problem back then.
My crystal ball told me that it was probably due to the relatively
large about of RAM (24G) available in this machine confusing Firefox
into the illusion that it can allocate a lot more memory than the i386
architecture really allows, and thus getting memory allocation
failure. ]
I had completely forgotten about this detail.
I have now switched back to `firefox-esr:i386` and the audio works again
(and it looks like the old problem I had with it has disappeared in the
mean time). I guess it's time I switch this machine to an amd64-only install.
Thank you all for your help.
Stefan
Stefan Monnier [2024-08-14 15:32:31] wrote:
> I have a machine here running a freshly updated and rebooted Debian
> testing where I can't get Firefox (more specifically `firefox-esr`) to
> use audio. E.g. I go to
>
> https://tekeye.uk/html/html5-video-test-page
>
> and none of the videos give me any audio output.
>
> I'm using pipewire and it generally works fine with other applications.
> E.g. `paplay` successfully plays my music files, and `chromium` on the
> same web page gives me audio output just fine.
>
> When I have `pavucontrol` open, I can "see" that Firefox does not appear
> in the "Playback" tab, contrary to `paplay` and `chromium`.
>
> When I try `firefox -P` and use a fresh new profile, the same
> problem occurs. Also I can see errors in the output such as:
>
> [Child 13905, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7fe182f6a100
> Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder
> found for audio/mp4a-latm: file
> ./dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:164
> [Child 13905, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7fe182875800
> Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder
> found for audio/mp4a-latm: file
> ./dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:164
> [Child 13905, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7fe181797300
> Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder
> found for audio/mp4a-latm: file
> ./dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:164
> [Child 13905, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7fe181797300
> Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder
> found for video/avc: file ./dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:164
> [Child 13905, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7fe181797c00
> Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder
> found for audio/mp4a-latm: file
> ./dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:164
> [Child 13905, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7fe181796a00
> Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder
> found for audio/mp4a-latm: file
> ./dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:164
> [Child 13905, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7fe181797c00
> Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder
> found for video/avc: file ./dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:164
> [Child 13905, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7fe181796a00
> Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder
> found for video/avc: file ./dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:164
> [Child 13905, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7fe181797f00
> Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder
> found for audio/mp4a-latm: file
> ./dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:164
> [Child 13905, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7fe181797f00
> Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_FATAL_ERR (0x806e0005) - Error no decoder
> found for video/avc: file ./dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachineBase.cpp:164
> [Child 13905, BackgroundThreadPool #1] WARNING: 7fe1838484c0 OpenCubeb()
> failed to init cubeb: file ./dom/media/AudioStream.cpp:281
> [Child 13905, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoder=7fe17c60cd00
> [OnMediaSinkAudioError]: file ./dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp:4604
>
> The last two lines occur when I click on the "unmute" button in the
> video (on the above web page) which is muted by default.
>
> Any idea what might be going on and/or how to track it down further?
>
>
> Stefan
