Firefox 78 Under CentOS 6 — No Sound?

Home » CentOS » Firefox 78 Under CentOS 6 — No Sound?
CentOS 33 Comments

I did a yum update on my CentOS 6 laptop and it upgraded Firefox to 78, and FF stopped seeing my mic and speakers. Is there some magic I need to do? As a short term (?) fix, I downgraded back to Firefox 68. My system is otherwise up-to-date.

33 thoughts on - Firefox 78 Under CentOS 6 — No Sound?

  • At Sat, 17 Oct 2020 19:08:49 -0500 CentOS mailing list wrote:

    Well, if it was introduced in Firefox 66, that means it is in Firefox 68, right? But the audio works just fine in Firefox 68. And why would the auto mute have any affect on the mic?

  • Well, the good news is you have over a month to migrate away from CentOS 6, which goes end of life at the end of November, 2020.

  • Akemi Yagi wrote:

    This is a huge bug! Using Firefox to watch videos is a basic activity.

    The bug with grub2 a few months ago was even more serious: it made systems unbootable. It’s discomfiting to see two major bugs so close to each other.

  • I’m less concerned with firefox being broken on 32-bit CentOS 6
    systems when the platform is only going to live for another month. Frankly, I’m glad to see flash die just a little earlier.

    It’s not really comparable to the terrible EFI/shim issue that happened, which was terrible for servers and workstations that can’t be reached remotely because they’re wedged in the boot, especially in these times when a lot of people are WFH.

  • At Tue, 20 Oct 2020 12:56:38 -0400 CentOS mailing list wrote:

    Even worse is that it is a failure for Google Voice and Google Hangouts — I
    use these to implement my home phone at present. I cannot use my cell phone, since I don’t have cell service at my house and cannot afford to pay
    $60+/month for a cruddy copper landline.

  • Jonathan Billings wrote:

    It isn’t just 32-bit, but also 64-bit, and it isn’t just Flash, but also HTML 5.

    To notice the bug, all you have to do is try to watch any video at Youtube or elsewhere, if the video has sound.

  • At Tue, 20 Oct 2020 13:35:59 -0400 CentOS mailing list wrote:

    Or try to make a phone call with Google Hangouts or listen to a voicemail with Google Voice…

  • At Tue, 20 Oct 2020 13:35:59 -0400 CentOS mailing list wrote:

    Also, it is specific to FF 78. FF 68 and eveythhing else in CentOS 6 that uses audio, works just fine. This suggests it is possibly a FF 78 problem.
    Does FF 78 sound work properly in CentOS 7 and 8? Does anyone know?

  • And if this is the case, it should also be broken in CentOS until it is fixed in RHEL source code.

  • FF 78 seems to work OK here in a CentOS 8 VM. FF 78 is apparently not offered to CentOS 7. Failed in testing, perhaps??
    Latest firefox version for CentOS 7 is 68.0.12.0-1.

  • At Tue, 20 Oct 2020 14:07:27 -0600 CentOS mailing list wrote:

    OK, so it is a FF78 / RHel 6 (implies CentOS 6) specific problem.

  • It will be in 7.9.2009 as an update. Should be in CR sometime within a week. It is in git.CentOS.org now:

    https://git.CentOS.org/rpms/firefox/commits/c7

    I released the CR up to 7.9.2009 GA for x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le yesterday:

    https://lists.CentOS.org/pipermail/CentOS-cr-announce/2020-October/thread.html

    Status of 7.9.2009:
    https://wiki.CentOS.org/About/Building_7

    TL;DR
    Keep an eye on the CR Announce list for firefox 78 in el7 .. and keep an eye on the Building_7 for 7.9,.2009 status. Probably 14 or so days
    (estimate) to a full release.

  • Leon Fauster via CentOS wrote:

    [yves@home firefox]$ ./firefox
    ./firefox: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.17′ not found (required by ./firefox)
    ./firefox: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.14′ not found (required by ./firefox)

    CentOS 6 only goes up to glibc 2.12.

  • Basically that says that upstream no longer thinks that Firefox is runnable on RHEL-6/CentOS-6 anymore. I think there was a similar problem at the end of EL-5 when a ‘YOU HAVE TO UPGRADE’ fix from Mozilla was released and while a lot of work was done by Red Hat to get it to work on RHEL-5, some items (and I really think it was sound and plugins) did not work. At the tail end of a release, most ‘desktop’ concerns are very hard to figure out as 10 year old software API’s are rarely kept working by the various
    ‘upstreams’.

    I want to be clear that I do understand this is causing major issues for users. I think a lesson learned from EL-5 and EL-6 is that EL releases need to be clearer on the difference between desktops and servers. There seems to be a point where desktop utilities fixes are mainly going to be
    ‘reasonable effort’ versus ‘guaranteed’ to be 100%… usually in the last 6
    months of a release. That way users can plan better that a certain amount of work is going to be needed by them to continue it working.

  • Upgrades for users would be a lot easier if the “upgrade” option on the install was more of an upgrade. I have seen the arguments on how Ubuntu upgrades leave unneeded packages littering the machine. However, at a minimum I would think an upgrade should keep /etc/hosts, /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, the list if repos in use. This would at least put the machine in a usable state from the get go. Saving a list of the applications which would not be reloaded as part of the upgrade would also be useful. It would at least make it possible to get a running start at rebuilding the users environment. My issues come from the conversion of CentOS 4 and 5 to 6. Maybe it is all better going to CentOS 8 (wishful thinking?)

  • That message was from Firefox 78.4 ESR downloaded from Mozilla. Obviously Red Hat does think that it’s possible to run Firefox 78.3 ESR
    on RHEL 6, because they shipped it. They just didn’t get the sound working properly.

    But end of life is in 6 weeks, so perhaps nobody will bother fixing the problem.

  • What confuses me here is why would Red Hat rebase a package so close to EOL. Now that they have they’re stuck with either leaving a severly broken firefox or providing a fix less than 6 weeks before EOL. I
    honestly don’t know which way they’ll go here but it just seems to me like it was a very poor decision to rebase firefox in RHEL6 so close to EOL to begin with.

    Peter

  • Peter wrote:

    I’m guessing that as Firefox ESR 68 is now a year ‘out-of-date’ (and no longer supported by Mozilla), that they wanted to provide a more up to date version for those that want to continue using EL6 after its EOL ?

    Just a thought, has anyone checked that the Redhat RHEL 6 build of ESR 78 works or or not? i.e. could it be an issue just with the CentOS build ?

    James Pearson

  • Someone reported up thread that the RHEL-6 version of ESR78 does not have working sound either. The main issue is that it is hard to debug this just from emails. I would need to get a RHEL-6 system with ESR68 running from command line with debug turned on and look to see what it is talking to on sound. I would then need to do the same with ESR78 to see what it tries to talk to. My guesses is that the API/ABI that the application ESR78 expects the kernel/glibc/etc sound system that GNOME/KDE/kernel etc moved to in the
    3.x services and the older 2.6 was deprecated and removed. This would then take someone going through the code changes between 68 and 78 to see what and why it was removed and if it is possible to put back in.

  • I don’t know. The changelog doesn’t indicate anything about sound issues, just security fixes. Its unlikely that anything but security fixes are being tracked anymore. I don’t have any CentOS6 systems left to test it on.

  • Jonathan Billings wrote:

    Red Hat just follow the Mozilla ESR stream release cycle, which is currently ESR 78 with point releases come out every 4 weeks or so

    Each ESR stream is supported by Mozilla for about a year, with each major release based on the standard ‘rapid release’ version at the time – i.e. the previous ESR version was 68, based on the Firefox rapid release version 68 and the current ESR version is 78, based on the Firefox rapid release version 78. The ESR point releases coincide with the rapid release major releases, although the ESR point releases are just for security bug fixes (occasionally contains other non-security bug fixes), whereas the rapid release new major versions may have new features, security and bug fixes plus other enhancements added etc

    Therefore the ESR release is more stable over a longer period – and so best suited for ‘Enterprise’ use

    The current ESR version is 78.4.0 – with 78.5.0 coming in November and 78.6.0 in December – so I’m guessing Red Hat might release 78.5.0 before EL6 reaches EOL at the end of November ?

    I have no idea if the latest 78.4.0 release from Red Hat will fix the sound issues on EL6

    James Pearson

  • OK I got a VM installed with EL6 and ran firefox –debug. The errors seem to be

    [Child 3570, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: 7fffd72b46d0 OpenCubeb()
    failed to init cubeb: file
    /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-78.3.0/dom/media/AudioStream.cpp, line 331
    [Child 3570, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoderffd72cb400
    [OnMediaSinkAudioError]: file
    /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-78.3.0/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp, line 3891
    [Child 3570, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoderffd72cb400
    Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_MEDIASINK_ERR (0x806e000b) –
    OnMediaSinkAudioError: file
    /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-78.3.0/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp, line 3470
    [Child 3570, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: 7fffd72b4fc0 OpenCubeb()
    failed to init cubeb: file
    /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-78.3.0/dom/media/AudioStream.cpp, line 331
    [Child 3570, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoderffd6edd400
    [OnMediaSinkAudioError]: file
    /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-78.3.0/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp, line 3891
    [Child 3570, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoderffd6edd400
    Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_MEDIASINK_ERR (0x806e000b) –
    OnMediaSinkAudioError: file
    /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-78.3.0/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp, line 3470
    [Thread 0x7fffcdcf5700 (LWP 3638) exited]
    [Child 3570, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: 7fffd72b5160 OpenCubeb()
    failed to init cubeb: file
    /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-78.3.0/dom/media/AudioStream.cpp, line 331
    [Child 3570, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoderffd6edd400
    [OnMediaSinkAudioError]: file
    /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-78.3.0/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp, line 3891
    [Child 3570, MediaDecoderStateMachine #1] WARNING: Decoderffd6edd400
    Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_MEDIASINK_ERR (0x806e000b) –
    OnMediaSinkAudioError: file
    /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-78.3.0/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp, line 3470

    when I try to play sounds from https://hpr.dogphilosophy.net/test/

    I am doing this in my spare time outside of moving and some other items.. so I am not sure ‘how fast’ I can get to this. [My current guess is that the Firefox requirement for pulseaudio in 78+ is looking for a different version ABI that EL6 supports.]