Trying to load some sf2 soundfonts with sfxload or asfxload causes immediate system crash.

[Phil The Dill]

Binary package hint: awesfx

Trying to load some .sf2 soundfonts into my SoundBlaster Live soundcard with either sfxload or asfxload results in an immediate system lockup or reboot.

Example command to cause the crash: sfxload DX7_GlassyPiano.sf2

This has occurred with two of my soundfonts: DX7_GlassyPiano.sf2 (17.6 mb) and Wavestation_GrandPiano.sf2 (25.6 mb).

The same soundfonts can be successfully loaded and used in Ubuntu software such as QSynth, and in Creative's SoundFont utility in Windows.

I can load and use other soundfonts via sfxload or asfxload without a problem.

I am using awesfx 0.5.1a-1 as obtained via Synaptic.

This problem occurs in Ubuntu 8.04.1 using either 2.6.24-19-generic or 2.6.24-19-rt kernel.

My soundcard is a SoundBlaster Live! Value with 128 mb of onboard memory. The following information is from the 'PCI Devices' section of the 'Hardinfo' utility in Ubuntu:

Name Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1
Class Multimedia audio controller
Domain 0
Bus, device, function 4, 2, 0
Vendor Creative Labs (www.creative.com)
OEM Vendor Creative Labs CT4850 SBLive! Value
IRQ 19
Latency 32
Bus Master Yes
I/O ports at 0x9000 - 0x9020

My system has 2 gig of ram and a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz cpu, with approximately 30 gig of free disc space available on the system partition.

I have repeated the attempts in varying situations, both with and without JACK running, with and without my external midi keyboard attached, with and without other midi software running, and the result is the same crash every time - either an immediate reboot or a complete system lockup.

Note that there may be something anomalous about the problematic soundfonts. Nautilus is unable to display it's 'Properties' dialog for one of them, although the other soundfont doesn't create any difficulties for Nautilus.

Please let me know if you wish me to upload one of the soundfonts involved in this problem.

[Emmet Hikory (persia)]

While I don't have the affected hardware (so can't replicate), uploading the affected soundfonts would be helpful towards generating replication. As this is a hard system crash, it seems that it may be difficult to collect appropriate stacktraces, etc, although if that can be done, it would be an acceptable alternative to the soundfonts.

I've not set this Incomplete pending that information, as it may be that someone with the affected hardware is able to replicate it without the affected soundfonts, in which case they would not be required to continue triage of the bug.

[Phil The Dill (twasbrillig)]

I have tried 3 times for the past several hours to upload the problematic soundfonts, both as sf2 files and compressed into a 9 mb 7z archive, but the upload has eventually failed each time.

I am on dialup and my connection's upload speed is only 3.2 kilobytes per second, meaning the upload will take about an hour or more, and apparently your server isn't that patient.

I will try to get access to a friend's broadband connection to upload the soundfont files some time in the next few days.

[Phil The Dill (twasbrillig)]

Ok I have attached the two affected soundfonts compressed into a 7z archive 'soundfonts.7z' (9,205,907 bytes)

[marker (mark-aktivix)]

I can confirm this bug. Attempting to load either of the two soundfonts supplied by Phil The Dill using asfxload on my SoundBlaster Live! causes an immediate hard system lockup. I am able to load smaller and larger soundfonts and use them successfully.