Bug 1304706

Summary: Orca sometimes freezes on restart
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Bohdan Milar <bmilar>
Component: orcaAssignee: Kalev Lember <klember>
Status: CLOSED EOL QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 23CC: bmilar, jdiggs, klember
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Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2016-12-20 18:26:18 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Bohdan Milar 2016-02-04 12:19:08 UTC
Description of problem:
Sometimes when screen reader is (re)started (Alt+Super+s) it does not start correctly. Orca consumes 100 % CPU and no speech can be heard. Sometimes Orca dies after a while. In other cases it must be killed (SIGKILL).

What is the most important - in such a situation the blind user (without the voice output) has practically no chance to find out what happened and to fix it.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
orca-3.18.2-1.fc23.noarch
speech-dispatcher-0.8.3-2.fc23.x86_64

How reproducible:
Sometimes (10 - 30 %)

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Log in to Gnome (on X).
2. Start screen reader (Alt+Super+s).
3. Stop screen reader (Alt+Super+s).
4. Wait for some time (min. several seconds, max. 1 hour).
5. Try to start screen reader again (Alt+Super+s).
6. If screen reader starts correctly, go to step 3.

Actual results:
Ocra is started but does not talk and consumes 100 % CPU.

Expected results:
Orca should start correctly (talk and not consume 100 % CPU).

Additional info:
I tried many times but I was not able to find a (more) reliable reproducer.
Tested on bare metal and on virtual machine (both x86_64) - same result.

Comment 1 Joanmarie Diggs 2016-02-04 14:41:48 UTC
When Orca is started but not talking, can you get into a terminal or console and do a 'pkill -9 speech*'? If so, does that solve it?

Comment 2 Bohdan Milar 2016-02-18 17:26:43 UTC
Tried on 3 computers after recent updates. One of them fresh installed (new HDD). Now I am unable to reproduce the same behaviour. Sometimes when Orca is restarted soon after it was stopped, it is not started at all. But further restart make it run correctly.

When I reproduced the total Orca freeze (before updates), the 'pkill -9 speech*' did NOT solve it. I had to kill Orca and then start it again.

Comment 3 Bohdan Milar 2016-02-26 17:37:44 UTC
Reproduced again - x86_64 VM, orca-3.18.2-1.fc23. Scenario:
- Orca started (alt+super+s)
- LO started
- OTD opened in Writer
- navigation through document (up, down, pgup, pgdown)
- waited for some times (cca 20 minutes, screen saver activated)
- password entered (to unlock screen)
- Orca stopped (alt+super+s)
- wait several minutes
- Orca started (alt+super+s)

Orca does not speak and consumes 100 % CPU.
"pkill -9 speech"
Orca still does not speak and consumes 100 % CPU.
Switching off screen reader also did not help.

I had to "pkill -9 orca" and start it again (alt+super+s).
"Mission impossible" for regular blind user.

Comment 4 Joanmarie Diggs 2016-02-26 17:52:56 UTC
You wrote "speech"; not "speech*". It makes a difference. Could you please verify that you really did use the wildcard with pkill?

Comment 5 Fedora End Of Life 2016-11-24 15:23:31 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 23 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 23. It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time
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Comment 6 Fedora End Of Life 2016-12-20 18:26:18 UTC
Fedora 23 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2016-12-20. Fedora 23 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

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