pulseaudio upgrade breaks sound

[Alesh Slovak]

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

After upgrading to pulseaudio 0.9.10-2ubuntu9 from 0.9.10-2ubuntu8 in 8.10 intrepid, my audio stopped working. I am using the snd-hda-intel driver.

The only thing that comes out of my speakers is some quiet crackling.

Edit: The working solution for this bug is to set PCM in "alsamixer -Dhw" to 80 and unmute the channel if necessary with the key M.

[Erik Reuter (misc71)]

I have the same problem. After the upgrade and reboot, sound was muted. When I unmuted it, then the only sound that could play was a low crackling sound. Also, when I shutdown, the shutdown process hangs while trying to halt ALSA.

I was able to get my sound playing again by commenting out the code that starts pulse-session in the file (below). I'm not familiar with pulseaudio, so I don't know if disabling it is going to break something else for me.

/etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio

# If we are loading a GNOME session, load pulseaudio.

#if [ "$BASESTARTUP" = gnome-session -o \
# \( "$BASESTARTUP" = x-session-manager -a \
# "`readlink /etc/alternatives/x-session-manager`" = \
# /usr/bin/gnome-session \) ]; then
# STARTUP="/usr/bin/pulse-session $STARTUP"
#fi

[Fabio Marzocca (thesaltydog)]

Confirm this behaviour on the same driver snd-hda-intel and Realtek ACL883 chipset.

[Erik Reuter (misc71)]

 There was a partial workaround to get sound working again here:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/288861

where alsamixer -Dhw revealed that the PCM volume was at zero, and turning it up restored
sound operation. I still have the problem that my system hangs during shutdown while it is
shutting down ALSA.

Here is a list of similar bugs:

#288861
#288652
#288093
#288039
#286966
#286430
#285965

[Alesh Slovak (aslovak)]

I am also experiencing ALSA hanging during shutdown. But I think it is unrelated as I was having that problem before the pulse audio upgrade.

[goto (gotolaunchpad)]

Alesh: The shutdown problem should be fixed in -proposed now.
Can you enable sound again by setting PCM in "alsamixer -Dhw" to 100 or so?

(Confirming this bug)

[Alesh Slovak (aslovak)]

I was able to enable sound again by setting the PCM volume as mentioned. And the shutdown problem seems to have resolved itself. Not very helpful for confirming the proposed fix, I'm afraid.

[goto (gotolaunchpad)]

Is there any information needed?

[Dan Smith (bytesandbolts)]

I also have this problem! Tried everything I've come across so far on the Internet. The only way I can get sound through my computer is playing a DVD that plays AC3 sound... anything other than AC3 you can't hear anything? I've also got the ALSA problem where it hangs for a minute or two on shutdown. But I would rather much get my sound working again?

[goto (gotolaunchpad)]

BigSlim: So your PCM volume in alsamixer -Dhw is not zero and you hear even though no sound?
By the way: The shutdown problem should be fixed in -proposed now.

[kungmidas (ih82b)]

I got the same thing, all sound channels were muted after freeze at "Shutting down ALSA...".

During one evening, I always got the hang at "Shutting down ALSA..." when rebooting or shutting down the PC.

Perhaps not coincidentally, I was having network problems the same evening, due to maintenance from my ISP. (Basically, my local network was fine, I just didn't have an Internet connection).

The next evening, Internet was fine, and the hang was gone.

aplay -l:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: CONEXANT Analog [CONEXANT Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: Conexant Digital [Conexant Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

[schrodycat (junk-jimandbarb)]

I looked to me like a startup dependency problem with S25pulseaudio (sorry, I have no logs) in /etc/rc5.d. The pulseaudio process did not appear to be running after a clean bootup, and there was no audio. Launching it manually worked - sound then worked.

I renamed S25pulseaudio to S31pulseaudio (thus starting after gdm) and it worked fine after a reboot.

[Matteo Settenvini (tchernobog)]

That is pulseaudio running as a system process. Shouldn't be running as a per-user one, and thus having its autostart file in /etc/xdg/pulseaudio?

It's usually unadvisable to run pulse system-wide.

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

There has been no activity on this bug for a while now. is this still an issue with either Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 with all updates installed, or Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 alpha 3?

Thanks.

[Alesh Slovak (aslovak)]

I was never quite clear on what the cause of this was, but I haven't experienced problems since Ubuntu 8.10. Ubuntu 9.04, and currently 9.10 work just fine. I think it should be safe to close this bug.

[cato (catonano)]

2010/3/1 Alesh <email address hidden>

> I was never quite clear on what the cause of this was, but I haven't
> experienced problems since Ubuntu 8.10. Ubuntu 9.04, and currently 9.10
> work just fine. I think it should be safe to close this bug.
>

Yes, it's safe to close it. Besides, the reason why the audio was affected
by the upgrade, was simply that the volume was set to 0during the upgrade.
To make it come back, resetting the volume was enough

>
> --
> pulseaudio upgrade breaks sound
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/288039
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of a duplicate bug.
>
> Status in “pulseaudio” package in Ubuntu: Incomplete
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: pulseaudio
>
> After upgrading to pulseaudio 0.9.10-2ubuntu9 from 0.9.10-2ubuntu8 in 8.10
> intrepid, my audio stopped working. I am using the snd-hda-intel driver.
>
> The only thing that comes out of my speakers is some quiet crackling.
>
> Edit: The working solution for this bug is to set PCM in "alsamixer -Dhw"
> to 80 and unmute the channel if necessary with the key M.
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/288039/+subscribe
>

--
La difesa più sicura contro il male è l'estremo individualismo,
l'originalità di pensiero, la stravaganza, perfino, se volete,
l'eccentricità… Il male va matto per la solidarietà.

Less than one di Joseph Brodsky

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for pulseaudio (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]