"Failed Loading Skin" sudo/root works, other users don't - Arch linux

[herochao]

So on Tuesday, my spotify stopped working, starting up with the message "Failed Loading Skin".

This problem seems to have many causes, but no solution I found worked for me.

System: Arch Linux 64bit

Kernel: 3.16.4/3.17.1 (both don't work)

DE: gnome-shell 3.14 (worked with spotify before tuesday), mutter, pulseaudio 5.0

Steps i tried:

reinstalling spotify, including deleting ~/.cache, .config and .local spotify folders and /usr/share/spotify/ : doesn't work

deleting any gnome/gtk3/gtk2 settings and trying different  theme/icon sets : doesn't work

trying the programm with another user who is not root : doesn't work

extracting the zip files of spotify.../Data/resources.zip into the same folder: doesn't work

starting spotify with sudo : works perfectly at all time during my changes

the most relateable thing i found was that there was a qtwebkit update on monday, now qtwebkit has version 2.3.4

the log when starting spotify in terminal is the same as with many other users:

Spoiler

/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify: /usr/lib/libssl.so.1.0.0: no version information available (required by /usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify)
/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify: /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0: no version information available (required by /usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify)
10:43:48.996 I [breakpad.cpp:107                ] Registered Breakpad for product: spotify

10:43:48.996 I [translate.cpp:139               ] Reloading language file
10:43:48.996 E [resource_loader.cpp:191         ] Loading of skin file(msgid.pob) failed
10:43:48.996 E [translate.cpp:116               ] Spotify resources and binary are out-of-sync. This should never happen.

because of the program working perfectly fine with sudo, i don't think that it's a theme error (tried setting everything to default with the normal user), missing file or compatiblity error,and as other non-root users don't work either, i don't think it's somthing with my personal config,

but rather some permission that normal users are missing... tried finding that with strace and xtrace, but nothing was found

thank you for your time, i hope someone can help me 🙂

[samjaved]

It doesn't run without sudo because you don't have the ownership to the index.dat file.

Change the owner of the file using terminal and all should run fine. Here's a little tutorial if you are not aware how to do this:

1. Open terminal
2. Run "sudo -s"
3. Enter password
4. Run "cd /.cache/spotify/Storage/"
5. Run "chown [Linux account username] index.dat"

Use your account username in step 5. You now own the file. Run Spotify and it will work.

[herochao]

thanks for the reply,

I tried your steps, but they did not help, I was already owner of the file and chown had no effect.

The same error message appeares, the log is slighty larger now, but it was this large in general, just not when i posted the first post. Can't really tell why...

Maybe other files that I need to be owner of or have write acces to? Something in the libs spotify needs, as there where no changes with spotify itself? (as far as i can remember or logs tell me...)

Again, it also happens to new users I create, so it's propably something others should have acces to, but only root can access.  Maybe the group of a file was changed or something?

longer log:

Spoiler

00:18:50.363 I [translate.cpp:139               ] Reloading language file
00:18:50.363 E [resource_loader.cpp:191         ] Loading of skin file(msgid.pob) failed
00:18:50.363 E [translate.cpp:116               ] Spotify resources and binary are out-of-sync. This should never happen.
00:18:50.366 I [translate.cpp:139               ] Reloading language file
00:18:50.366 E [resource_loader.cpp:191         ] Loading of skin file(msgid.pob) failed
00:18:50.366 E [translate.cpp:116               ] Spotify resources and binary are out-of-sync. This should never happen.
00:18:50.366 I [breakpad.cpp:261                ] Searching for crashdumps: /home/nicolas/.cache/spotify/*.dmp

00:18:50.366 E [resource_loader.cpp:191         ] Loading of skin file(skin.xml) failed

[Peter__]

It's worth nuking ~/.config/spotify too. The binary out of sync message is a weird one too.

[herochao]

already tried that, just tried it again, doesn't work 😕

[Peter__]

@olejon  @leamas - Any ideas? 

[olejon]

---

@Peter wrote:

@olejon  @leamas - Any ideas? 

---

Must be some permission problem I guess. I just fired up my ArchBang VM and did a "pacman -Syyu" + reboot, and Spotify worked fine. However, I was not running the latest Spotify, so I installed the latest from AUR, and it still worked fine (deleted config and cache before upgrade).

How did you install Spotify?

If this was Arch related I suspect we would have seen many more reports like this.

[herochao]

I installed spotify using pacaur, "pacaur -S spotify" pulls the spotify package from the AUR and installes it.

However, i found something new: On lxde (installed today) with my non-root user, it works perfectly, so it's propably something gnome-shell related. As I said, 3.14 worked perfectly until tuesday. However, i'd prefer to stick to the gnome shell.

I don't really know what to do know, as I already tried resetting all gnome stettings and setting the theme/icon-theme etc. to default, but it doesn't work. Login to gnome-shell as root and spotify works. Any ideas?

already tried reinstalling the entire gnome group (https://www.archlinux.org/groups/x86_64/gnome/) and deleting and reinstalling everything theme related.

I don't really think its a theme error, as it works with root and doesn't work with new users... Also, there is no other programm that has problems (Skype, Playonlinux, some Wine application, firefox/thunderbird, the gnome apps, some QT apps I tried).

What DEs do you use, and do you have any ideas?

Thanks for your patience and all the help so far, really apreciate it! 🙂

[leamas]

Hm... also I have no idea what's going om here.

You might try the installer at http://github.com/leamas/spotify-make, run it in user mode, This will make a new install which is independent of the system-wide ffrom the aur package. Perhaps it could give some hints, dunno.

It doesn't need to be a permission problem. It can also be spotiify finding some old cruft, trtying to load wrong version. This should be visible if you start spotify from the command line.

[olejon]

Hmm, I'm not running GNOME Shell 3.14 anywhere, so can't test. You may find a live CD for some distro running it and try Spotify there, to see it if's really GNOME. If it's theme related, you can try to change the GTK and Qt theme (Spotify uses Qt mainly, but I think GTK is involved in the WebView). Maybe if you use a plain Qt theme that doesn't get its look from GTK. I don't know, really.

I may try GNOME Shell in my ArchBang VM, but not right now.

[herochao · Accepted solution]

Yesterday, I wiped the main partition of my pc (not my personal folder exept for most config files) and reinstalled arch. After setting everything back up, on the same setup as described in my first post, spotify works flawlessly.

I'd still like to know what caused the problem, maybe an error in the global (not user specific) config of gnome, pulseaudio or something, but yeah. As the problem did not appear while installing everything again, I think its okay now. My old setup was pretty old and had gained quite a of bit weight in software I tested and configurations I tried.

Your Idea to change the QT theme was something I didn't try, as I don't know how to do that, maybe that was the solution.

Thank you for your time, I'll mark this thread as solved.

[captainju]

I have the same error as you :

➜  ~  spotify
/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify: /usr/lib/libssl.so.1.0.0: no version information available (required by /usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify)
/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify: /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0: no version information available (required by /usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify)
13:03:09.520 I [breakpad.cpp:107                ] Registered Breakpad for product: spotify

13:03:09.520 I [translate.cpp:139               ] Reloading language file
13:03:09.520 E [resource_loader.cpp:191         ] Loading of skin file(msgid.pob) failed
13:03:09.520 E [translate.cpp:116               ] Spotify resources and binary are out-of-sync. This should never happen.
13:03:09.525 I [translate.cpp:139               ] Reloading language file
13:03:09.525 E [resource_loader.cpp:191         ] Loading of skin file(msgid.pob) failed
13:03:09.525 E [translate.cpp:116               ] Spotify resources and binary are out-of-sync. This should never happen.
13:03:09.525 I [breakpad.cpp:261                ] Searching for crashdumps: /home/jblondeau/.cache/spotify/*.dmp

13:03:09.526 E [resource_loader.cpp:191         ] Loading of skin file(skin.xml) failed

When I run it as root, it works perfectly.

I'm using latest build from aur 0.9.11.27-1 and I'm running it on awesome WM

[captainju]

I got that from strace : 

readlink("/proc/self/exe", "/usr/share/spotify/spotify-clien"..., 4095) = 41
access("/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify\200/Data/resources.zip", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
write(2, "13:21:27.923 I [translate.cpp:13"..., 7313:21:27.923 I [translate.cpp:139               ] Reloading language file) = 73
write(2, "\33[0m", 4)                   = 4
write(2, "\n", 1
)                       = 1
readlink("/proc/self/exe", "/usr/share/spotify/spotify-clien"..., 4095) = 41
open("/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/msgid.pob", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
write(2, "13:21:27.923 E [resource_loader."..., 5013:21:27.923 E [resource_loader.cpp:191         ] ) = 50
write(2, "\33[1;31m", 7)                = 7
write(2, "Loading of skin file(msgid.pob) "..., 38Loading of skin file(msgid.pob) failed) = 38

 Any idea ?

[leamas]

Well, the obvious question is aboiut that file: /usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify\200/Data/resources.zip

Does it exist? What's the permissions?

[captainju]

No it doesn't exist

There is a resources.zip into /usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/spotify/Data/

I tried to unzip it inside spotify-client and it works

So I guess spotify (run as a regular user) can't unzip it at runtime.

[leamas]

Well, this looks like a packaging error. You probably should file a bug against the archlinux package (sorry,  no hint on archlinux's administrative details)

Again, you might want to try the installer at http://github.com/leamas/spotify-make as a walk-around. Running iin user mode, it will not interfere with the systemwide installation done by the archlinux package

[donbex]

It doesn't seem to be a packaging issue. On my Arch Linux 64bit the Spotify client works fine. I tried attaching strace to the spotify process and it looks like spotify spawns a lot of threads, one of which accesses the resources.zip file

getuid()                                = 1000
readlink("/proc/self/exe", "/usr/share/spotify/spotify-clien"..., 4095) = 41
access("/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/Data/resources.zip", F_OK) = 0
open("/usr/share/spotify/spotify-client/Data/resources.zip", O_RDONLY) = 11

Have you tried reinstalling spotify after making the package anew, i.e. not using a cached copy? Stil, this indeed looks like a permissions issue. Could you please post the output of the following command? (it lists the groups your user is in)

grep [your username] /etc/group | cut -d ':' -f 1

[captainju]

Yes I tried reinstalling it, but no success.

Here is the outcome of grep :

lp
games
network
video
audio
optical
storage
power
wireshark
vboxusers
usbfs
fuse

 Do I miss a group ?

[dwaalspoor98]

I had the same issue and it drove me nuts, especially since I am a quite experienced Linux users, after searching and trying various solutions the problem seemed to be QT/GTK theme related. I just solved the issue by changing the QT theme.

The QT GUI style I had configured was GTK+ style, with this style I got the errors. It seems all the other styles are working fine, so for now I use 'Desktop Settings (Default)'.

There are multiple ways to change the QT style, one of them is editing ' ~/.config/Trolltech.conf' directly (~ means your home directory). Or use the qtconfig-qt4 utility from 'extra/qt4'.

I hope this will help you and others to solve the issue, and of course somebody from the Spotify team will pick this up!

Cheers 🙂

[captainju]

Indeed, changing the QT style does work !

I was using GTK+ GUI style, and I changed it for the Desktop settings (default), it's now working...