gcompris lost sound (except Tuxpaint)

Update 2009-04-08: Problem solved, ticket can be closed.
Hello, I have good news: problem solved, ticket can be closed.
"Luckily" gnome crashed for all the users somehow. There was no desktop, no icons, nothing.
I had to login via a textual virtual tty and manually delete some directories for all the users. I'm not at that computer, but I recall they were .gconf, .gnome, .gnome2 and .gnome2_private, but maybe others as well. I can clarify this detail writing form that box if you wish.
Anyway, as a result of defaulting their gnome environment back to factory defaults resulted the sound to come back on gnome too, not only kde!
Now gcompris works as it was working right after install.

My conclusion is gnome settings were somehow corrupted resulting this particular application to lose sound, but nothing more serious. What is strange and I cannot explain is that creating a brand new user from scratch also resulted no sound. Another, more serious gnome crash forced me to default the gnome environment which resolved the problem. I'm not aware of any gcompris updates during this course of events, moreover there was always sound under kde, which leads me to think it is gnome that went wrong for a period of time, but it was patched either with purpose or as a side effect.

The whole problem has been resolved all of a sudden as it popped up. This is a bit alarming, to be honest.
Anyway, thank you for your attention and sorry for the noise with this ticket.
I don't know how to close the ticket, please do the favour and administer it.

Have a nice day,
  Peter
=== End of update 2009-04-08 ===

Update 2009-02-02:
1. Creating a brand new user results no change in behaviour, i.e. no sound in gcompris except for TuxPaint. Note: all users are defaulted to gnome on the system.

2. Starting a kde session for any of the users fixes the problem for the session! There are sounds as expected in all the programs in kde!

This leads me to think problem is not with gcompris itself (note also it had sound right after install). Problem is with gcompris <=> gnome interaction, while gcompris <=> kde interaction is OK.

Hope this helps. Don't want to force users to KDE just because of this. My ambition is to make it working under gmome as well. Thank you.

=== End of update 2009-02-02 ===

Michael Lustfield proposed the following answer:
I would suggest filing a bug against this. You seem to have sufficient
data to conclude an actual bug as well as enough information to assist
the bug manager.

======

Hello,

I have a strange sound problem with gcompris only. I'm losing my reputation in front of my kids because it was working, and then gcompris somehow lost almost all of its sounds, except for Tuxpaint, which is still chiming.

I installed an ubuntu hardy heron lts from scratch with 2.6.24-19-generic kernel, the newest that time. Everything worked flawlessly right out of the box, including sound as well, even with gcompris. Gcompris was configured with the sounds package of our language (Hungarian, if that matters.) Kids fell in love with the computer, mainly because of gcompris, and partially because the familiar voices to them.

I went forward to 2.6.24-21-server kernel (4GB RAM) but can boot up the old one anytime if you like for troubleshooting. I also accepted some recommended upgrade packages that bubbled up from time to time.

After a month of this kind of usage, sound suddenly disappeared from gcompris almost entirely, only TuxPaint held its sound from the gcompris package. And still, everything else has sound, I can play audio and video files, watch youtube movies in browser, etc. Problem is, I cannot pinpoint neither the exact package that broke this down, nor the exact date, since I'm not playing with gcompris. Kids reported the problem and started to complain about the lost sound.

User privileges are OK, sound settings OK (ALSA, btw), test sound can be heard on the config panel, all users incl. kids can hear sound from Tuxpaint and all the above applications, but not from the rest of gcompris. No sound even after completely reinstalling gcompris.

What did I/autoupdate mess up? No clue by browsing syslog, dmesg etc. The most frustrating it was working like a charm right from the first minute, and then broke down somehow.
Please help, thank in advance.
If you would know my kids, you also would cry for help on a forum. :)
Have a nice day,
  Peter

peter@princz:~$ cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [SB ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI SB
                      HDA ATI SB at 0xfe024000 irq 18
 1 [HDMI ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI HDMI
                      HDA ATI HDMI at 0xfdffc000 irq 20
peter@princz:~$ uname -a
Linux princz 2.6.24-21-server #1 SMP Mon Aug 25 18:06:43 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
peter@princz:~$ lsmod | grep -i snd
snd_rtctimer 4640 0
snd_hda_intel 344728 5
snd_pcm_oss 42016 0
snd_mixer_oss 17792 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 78596 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
snd_page_alloc 11528 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd_hwdep 10500 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_seq_dummy 4868 0
snd_seq_oss 35456 0
snd_seq_midi 9248 0
snd_rawmidi 25632 1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event 8320 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq 54096 6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer 24836 3 snd_rtctimer,snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device 9612 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
snd 56868 22 snd_rtctimer,snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_hwdep,snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
soundcore 8800 1 snd
peter@princz:~$