Ambience sound settings get lost/overwritten when switching between ambiences

Bug Reports
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#28

No, definitely not “in this specific scenario” but actually in the typical and intended scenario of using ambiences - precisely what they are meant for: having two (or more) ambiences with different sound settings and switching between them. Which due to this bug causes that sound settings of the former ambience replace (imperceptibly to the user) the sound settings of the latter one. Just switching between ambiences certainly isn’t a “specific” scenario that I “keep pushing” but in fact the typical and intended way of using them.

And given that such an undesired overwriting of sound settings happens on EVERY switch between ambiences (and additionally upon reboot an active ambience loses settings of most of its notifications but calendar and chat), I dare to stubbornly repeat that IN MY OPINION it such a state it makes the whole ambience system broken and completely unreliable.

Kindly let me have and express my own opinion in my own thread under my own bug report. Thank you very much.

Only as long as they don’t switch between ambiences. And when they sooner or later do it, they will be unpleasantly surprised when they miss important calls or don’t wake up for work due to this bug.

What actually is your problem? Unlike you - who hasn’t contributed to this topic in any other way but patronizing me - I did submit the bug report the way it was supposed to be made, made some further tests and provided additional information, took videos and screenshots illustrating the issue, and with the invaluable help of @nephros also a workaround has been given in form of configuring and using profiles instead of ambiences.

Only after all that, and after having additionally discovered that even a simple reboot further breaks ambience sound settings, I dared to write ONE F****NG SENTENCE that IN MY OPINION this currently makes the whole ambience system broken and unreliable. And here come you and scold me, yourself having contributed absolutely nothing to this topic.

Come on, find yourself some more fruitful ways of killing your time.

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#29

@flypig, I’ve seen that you confirmed reading (and marking as tracked) most of the other bug reports posted recently. Could you please confirm that this one didn’t go unnoticed and you’re aware of it? IMO, it is a serious issue, affecting the whole ambience system, and potentially resulting (which was the case for me) in missing important phone calls, messages, etc. due to no notifications.

#30

[Off-topic]
I’m a member of the bug coordination team and I’m in charge of forwarding properly written and easily reproducible reports, such as yours. That’s why they get read and tagged correctly by flypig.

For more information, see this thread.
By the way, you’re not alone. It’s a bit annoying to write everywhere to add your bug report. Do not forget, that it won’t be fixed faster if it’s tracked or not by Jolla.
[/Off-topic]

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#31

It’s a bit annoying (if I may quote you) to read exaggerations such as these. I did not write “everywhere”, but SOLELY in this very thread (i.e. under the bug report itself) plus a single post in the thread sacrificed to today’s community meeting (which is meant to suggest topics to cover, isn’t it?) that I planned to attend (in order to discuss this issue) but unfortunately couldn’t. Ergo, in total two posts in two threads (out of 12709 existing), i.e. certainly not “everywhere”. Also, I did not expect anyone “to add my bug report” but to only to kindly confirm noticing it.

#32

Thanks for your very thorough but report @wetab73. I’ve created an internal bug report about it and tagged it as “tracked”. This certainly looks like a valid bug, and I’ll do my best to share any updates about it here.

Just to expand on what @pherjung said, I ask the Bug Coordination Team to list no more than 10 bugs per community meeting as otherwise I run out of bandwidth, and they choose the 10 from their backlog at random.

They also do a lot more than just passing the bugs on: they check bugs are clear, well-formatted, reproducible, etc. which is a lot of work. So any support you and others can provide to them is appreciated.

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#33

Don’t know if it is of any importance to bug tracking, but have you created the ambiences using Settings or by writing ambience files in /usr/share/ambience/?

I’m using self-made ambiences to change the ring tone between an ogg-file and no sound without problems. But I have X10.

#34

on Vollaphone and GS290,
4.4.0.64
With ambience created from Gallery and Ringtone/Volume set, the selected audio and volume level persist between ambient switches and reboots.

I did notice that the last ‘custom’ ringtone applies to other ambiences which don’t have any specific ringtone set. Which I found ‘ok’.

#35

This happens not only with ambiences created using ambience settings, but even with the standard ambiences, eg. Water and Fire.

I get exactly the same problem on both my 10 III and the XA2 Ultra (both 4.4.0.68), so this isn’t unique to one specific device or OS setup.

Only my Jolla1 is free from this bug, so it must have been introduced past OS 3.4.

#36

As the recent OS update wiped my modifications which were made directly in the files, I changed it to a Patchmanager patch, including creation of the new files (e.g. 60.sailfish_custom.ini defining my new profile).

Now the question is: is there any way to make Patchmanager restart profiled when this patch is activated?

EDIT: It looks that Patchmanager cannot automatically restart profiled, so at least the file defining the custom profile has to be physically copied to /etc/profiled in order to avoid having to manually restart profiled after each reboot.

It would be great if Patchmanager could be enhanced to be able to automatically restart more services…

#37

Please open an issue about that.

It’s possible, but it requires adding a new category to the metadata, which in turn means also changing the web catalog backend.

So we need to cordinate that well.

#38

Ok. I’ll try to do it later today. As well as about another issue: if PM is set to ask whether to activate all patches after reboot and tapping the remorse timer cancels loading patches, they should still be remembered so that they can be started the next time. Whereas currently tapping that remorse timer disables all patches for good, so it then takes selecting everything anew. (sorry for OT).

#39

Oh, I never noticed that. I only ever have to to that after lipstick crashes (because PM takes all the blame for any lipstick crash and disables all patches in shame).

#40

I tap on that remorse counter to (allegedly temporarily) disable all patches prior to every OS update. Upon next reboot one would expect it to normally start enabled patches (especially that it still shows that remorse timer), but no, it turns out that all patches are disabled for good and it starts… nothing. Which is quite annoying if you have a lot of patches installed but only some of them in use. Then you have to scroll through that long list and try to remind yourself what to enable or not.

#41

Quite a bit of discussion here. Trying to follow it all, on the videos it’s displaying the sound settings page but the ambience settings are not shown. Clearly the silent ambience has everything overridden but I’m not sure what the first ambience has on its own settings. Upon switching to that, the tones explicitly set in the ambience should only be assigned over the previous silent tones.

On a later message it seemed that the ambience settings except these two had somehow disappeared. So to me sounds like the problem is not per se the ambience switch but whatever deletes some ambience settings.

Tried setting ambience to have a custom sound file and another with some jolla provided and switching between them but no problem here so far.

#42

Ambience settings are not shown on the video because - as already described in the discussion above - almost all settings (but chat and calendar) DISAPPEAR from there. See this screenshot (already posted earlier):

https://forum.sailfishos.org/uploads/db4219/original/2X/4/4695675898c20b75cdc429a35bc33400351407b9.jpeg

Those sounds disappearing from the ambience settings are the same sounds which get overwritten in the sound settings. Only chat and calendar remain intact in both places.

I thought the video would become too complicated if I was additionally switching each time to Ambience settings, that’s why it shows the Sounds and alerts settings to make the problem easy to notice. On the Ambience settings screen those replaced sounds couldn’t be shown on the video, because they just DISAPPEAR from there and are not shown there at all, as you can see on the screenshot above.

Obviously, the initial sounds in the ambience settings were the same as what you can see at the beginning of the video in the sound settings, before they got overridden by sound from the second ambience. And when they got overriden in Sounds and alerts settings, at the same time they disappeared from the Ambience settings, where only Calendar and Chat sounds remained visible - as shown on the screenshot.

Yes, exactly. As described, those sound settings that get overriden in sound settings, at the same time DISAPPEAR from the Ambience settings.

To recap:

  • either create new ambience or use some existing one and configure all sounds in it: ringtone, sms, email, chat, calendar, alarm clock
  • switch to some other ambience and then go back to that first ambience
  • open its settings and note that all sound settings but calendar and chat have disappeared from there (as shown on the screenshot linked above) (1)
  • in Settings/Sounds and alerts note that all sounds but calendar and chat got overwritten by sounds from the other ambience. (2)

That’s it.

Notes to the above:

(1) For all sound settings but calendar and chat to disappear from the active Ambience settings, it is usually enough to just REBOOT the phone. Just set up all sounds (add all “actions”) in Ambience settings, set it as active ambience, reboot the phone and then check - only calendar and chat will persist.

(2) Sometimes it happens right away, on every ambience switch, whereas other times it takes several switches for this problem to happen. So don’t give up if you don’t get this bug after just one ambience switch, try it a few more times and a reboot in between.

As I wrote, the exact same problem is present on both my 10 III and XA2 Ultra, so it is unlikely that it is an OS corruption at my end. I do not use any modifications / patches or software related to ringtones or ambiences, and just to make sure I tested it also after disabling all patches in Patchmanager and with no applications running.

Note that sometimes it happens on every single ambience switch, and sometimes it takes several switches for it to happen.

As I said, as it happens on two different devices, I don’t think it can be unique to my setup or caused by anything at my end. Besides, searching the forum reveals that also other people have reported at least some of those problems, e.g. the following bug report is about sound settings (in his case alarm sound) disappearing from the ambience settings upon reboot:

#43

Thinking if the reboot is the keyword here. There is an old bug, somewhat slipped through the cracks, that if the ringtone file is stored in SD card and the ambience gets activated before SD card is mounted, it can remove ringtone setting as the file doesn’t exist. Trying again I’m not immediately able to reproduce now that either, but that could be the first thing recheck and handle more robustly.

#44

No. I’ve tested it really thoroughly and it doesn’t take a reboot to get the sounds replaced. As you can see on the videos, there is no reboot there, a simple switch between two ambiences is all it takes for the sounds to get totally screwed.

The location of the ringtone file doesn’t have any impact on it, either. As I wrote in the discussion, I tested it with sounds from SD card, internal storage, and even with “built-in” default Jolla sounds – same result.

The only thing that does have a connection with reboot is the disappearing of sounds on the Ambience settings page. This is what happens after a reboot, or after an ambience switch.

Just setup all the sounds on an ambience settings page (ringtone, sms, email, chat, calendar, alarm clock), set that ambience as active, reboot, then go again to that ambience’s settings, and voila! only calendar and chat remain visible and all the remaining items are gone.

As for possible causes, in ~/.local/share/system/privileged/Ambienced there are 3 mysql database files holding ambience settings, which have the following extensions: .sqlite, .shm and .wal. As far as I understand it, the .sqlite is the main database, whereas .shm and .wal are kind of temporary (work) files. I’ve noticed that the .sqlite file does not get updated upon an ambience change or modification of ambience settings (e.g. its sounds). I’ve just changed an ambience, modified its sounds, switched to another ambience, switched back to the initial ambience, rebooted, and the main .sqlite database remained remained untouched even after reboot. Its date of last modification is weeks ago.

I strongly suspect yet another access problem caused by Sailjail.

#45

I can’t really tell from the videos if there’s a bug in the ambience switching or not. The behavior there is perfectly fine if the latter ambience didn’t have those tone settings. The question being in what scenario the setting get removed.

Tried again rebooting with a custom ambience which has all the tone setting. This time the one having ringtone on SD card got removed so the race condition for that still exists it seems.

Sailjail unlikely involved. It’s not used for the homescreen, ambienced nor the settings app.

#46

But it was clearly stated many times that both ambiences have all tones configured, and that switching between them causes that sounds (ringtone, sms, email, clock alarm) of the first ambience get replaced by sounds from the other one, only leaving chat and calendar sounds intact. In the bug report, in the “Steps to reproduce” part, it is clearly stated that:

I also wrote in the bug report (and provided a screenshot of it) that on the Ambience page sound settings of all tones but chat and calendar DISAPPEAR upon reboot:

So what’s still missing?

Oh well… when I find some time for it, I guess I’ll have to record yet another video including the view of Ambience settings, or else, clearly, we won’t move a step forward past debating about what the videos show or don’t show.

#47

So, here’s the new video:

It shows the following:

  • 00:00 - 00:15 - Water ambience is active. Its settings page is shown where you can see that all sounds are configured.
  • 00:20 - 01:40 - Reboot.
  • 01:46 - 02:00 - Again Water ambience settings are shown, where you can now see that ringtone, SMS, email and alarm clock sound settings have permanently DISAPPEARED during the reboot, and only calendar and chat sounds (Jolla default, “built-in” tones) remained.
  • 02:02 - 02:13 - Settings of another ambience called “BlackBerry Blue 2” are shown, where you can see that all sounds are set to “No sound”
  • 02:20 - 02:22 - “Audio and Feedback” settings page is shown, where you can see that all sounds from the “Water” theme are still active after reset, even though they DISAPPEARED from the “Water” ambience settings page (as shown at 01:46 - 02:00), which makes it completely inconsistent. And they are not only still shown there, but they actually still DO WORK normally.
  • 02:23 - 02:24 - “BlackBerry Blue 2” ambience gets activated (which has all sounds set to “No sound”). All sounds correctly change to “No sound”, which can be instantly seen on the “Sounds and Feedback” settings page.
  • from 02:40 - I am switching back to “Water” ambience. As you can instantly see on the “Sounds and Feedback” settings page (which gets updated on the fly), at this point sounds get TOTALLY SCREWED UP. Ringtone, SMS, email and alarm clock (i.e. all those tones which disappeared from ambience settings during reboot) are not switched to what the “Water” ambience used to have configured but they all remain at “No sound” setting from the “BlackBerry Blue 2” theme. Only calendar and chat sounds (i.e. the ones which did not get removed from ambience settings during reboot) get correctly changed to what they should be.

To recap:

  • a simple reboot WIPED settings of ringtone, SMS, email and alarm clock (i.e. all custom tones) of a currently active ambience, without the user being notified about it in any way other than that those settings silently disappeared from that ambience’s settings page (but at the same time they were preserved on the Settings / Sounds and Feedback page and they continued to normally work)
  • it was then enough to switch to any other ambience and back to the initial ambience for the sounds to get totally screwed up, ending up with a mixture of sounds (or - even worse - “No sound” settings) from both ambiences.
  • As the ambience that was active during reboot has lost its rintone, sms, email and alarm clock settings permanently, enabling that ambience no longer sets up those sounds but from now on they are always preserved from the ambience you’re switching from. That of course without the user knowing anything about it, which in case of the “No sound” setting is a perfect way to miss important calls, emails and messages.

Finally, NO, this problem is NOT limited to only files located on SD card and it is NOT only triggered by reboot. Ambienced INSTANTLY reacts the very same way (i.e. by SILENTLY REMOVING the corresponding sound from active ambience’s settings without ever notifying the user) ANYTIME, upon ANY, even just very temporary, problem with accessing a sound file that’s set in currently active ambience, regardless of the location. The very moment that Ambienced (silently, in the background) is signaled that some sound file or path to it becomes inaccessible (even just for a fraction of second and for literally any reason), it instantly and permanently (silently, in the background) removes that sound from the current ambience’s settings.

Which can be checked with a very simple test: select a sound file from e.g. ~/Music as ringtone, then do ANYTHING to make that file temporarily unavailable, even just for a few seconds: e.g. rename it, or move it to some other folder, or rename the parent folder, et cetera. Then after merely a few seconds undo your changes to the file to restore access to it. Now go to settings of active ambience and see how that sound got PERMANENTLY REMOVED from there, even though you restored access to it before you even opened the ambience settings or did any ambience related operation.

The following video shows how sound file named “Pigulka” (located in /home/defaultuser/Music) is set up as active ambience’s ringtone. Then, to simulate temporary access problem to that file, I renamed that file, and after merely a few seconds I renamed it back to what it was. All that without opening the Ambience settings or doing any ambience related modifications in the meantime. But it was enough for that tone to get instantly, permanently and silently removed from active ambience’s settings.

I would say that it is a pretty bad design to use user’s notification tones directly from their original location. It’s very susceptible to all kinds of problems, resulting in such a mess as reported in this thread. Custom sounds set up by the user should always be copied by Ambienced to its own folder in built-in storage, and only used from there, so that they are protected against any access problems until the user consciously and intentionally changes them. Or else we’ve got what we’ve got.

Oh, and also some default fallback tones should always be used if there is any kind of problem with a user’s sound, rather than just removing it and allowing it to be replaced with unknown setting carried on from another ambience, which may (and does) cause that e.g. the “No sound” option travels this way from a “night” ambience to the “day” ambience, i.e. where the user definitely does not expect it and relies on properly working notification tones.

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