Hi Gerald,

On Fri, 2016-06-17 at 23:57 +0200, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
> I am wondering whether any of you also get hit by the "Additional 
> Multimedia Codecs Required" denial-of-service attack with GNOME on 
> Tumbleweed (and what to possibly do about it)?

Luckily not, but reading below, I also know why I'm not hit by it

> In a nutshell, now and then, out of a sudden, without any trigger 
> that I could see
> 
>   "Additional Multimedi Codecs Required"
>   "An application is requesting additional multimedia codecs"

'some' application is requesting a codec - and does so in a very stupid
way if I may add (without waiting for the outcome and without
remembering, that it already asked for it)

> shows up in the notification area.  At a rate of two or perhaps
> three per second.  

A sane app should be aware that thus would take the user time - and
asking this often can't be useful

> Sometimes it goes away after a bit (in particular various attempts
> and arbitrary mouse clicking?), sometimes <Alt><F2> "r" <Return>
> helps.
> 
> Debugging this I guess it might be related to the following repeating
> N times (in journalctl)?
> 
>  Jun 17 23:41:30 anthias.pfeifer.com kde4-kopete.desktop[2566]: **
> Message: PackageKit: xid = 0
>  Jun 17 23:41:30 anthias.pfeifer.com kde4-kopete.desktop[2566]: **
> Message: PackageKit: desktop_id = (null)
>  Jun 17 23:41:30 anthias.pfeifer.com kde4-kopete.desktop[2566]: **
> Message: PackageKit: Codec nice name: Vorbis decoder
>  Jun 17 23:41:30 anthias.pfeifer.com kde4-kopete.desktop[2566]: **
> Message: PackageKit: ignoring field named streamheader
>  Jun 17 23:41:30 anthias.pfeifer.com kde4-kopete.desktop[2566]: **
> Message: PackageKit: structure: gstreamer1(decoder-audio/x-
> vorbis)()(64bit)

This is absolutely the reason. And as I don't use kopete, it explains
why I don't see it. In first instance, I suggest to file a bug against
kopete right away - their codec-requesting code must be reworked

> Still, is there a way to set some rate limiting on the GNOME
> notification side?  (If not, might that be considered a useful
> addition?)

Interesting idea - I filed it as a bug upstream as a suggestion:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=767809

Cheers,
Dominique

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