karmic: audio stops playing audio periodically

[Asif Youssuff]

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

pulseaudio stops playing audio periodically using mplayer-nogui and moc (possibly others, have not tested with others).

The daemon doesn't exit, but upon doing killall pulseaudio and restarting playback, audio works again... and then after a few minutes (sometimes as long as 20 minutes or so), it stops playing audio again.

Looking at mplayer's console output provides nothing interesting, but I have attached the ubuntu-bug report for pulseaudio in this report.

I'd be happy to help test this issue further.

ProblemType: Bug
AplayDevices:
 **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Architecture: i386
AudioDevicesInUse: Error: command ['fuser', '-v', '/dev/dsp', '/dev/snd/by-path', '/dev/snd/controlC0', '/dev/snd/pcmC0D0c', '/dev/snd/pcmC0D0p', '/dev/snd/pcmC0D2c', '/dev/snd/seq', '/dev/snd/timer', '/dev/sequencer2', '/dev/sequencer'] failed with exit code 1:
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'NVidia'/'HDA NVidia at 0xc8000000 irq 22'
   Mixer name : 'Realtek ALC888'
   Components : 'HDA:10ec0888,1025014a,00100202 HDA:14f12c06,1025014a,00100000'
   Controls : 32
   Simple ctrls : 19
Date: Mon May 18 21:57:39 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: pulseaudio 1:0.9.15-1ubuntu3
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.30-5.6-generic
SourcePackage: pulseaudio
Uname: Linux 2.6.30-5-generic i686
mtime.conffile..etc.pulse.daemon.conf: 2009-05-18T21:32:49.538841

[Asif Youssuff (yoasif)]

I ran pulseaudio in console mode, and received these errors:

$ pulseaudio
E: alsa-sink.c: ALSA woke us up to write new data to the device, but there was actually nothing to write!
E: alsa-sink.c: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_hda_intel'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
E: alsa-sink.c: We were woken up with POLLOUT set -- however a subsequent snd_pcm_avail() returned 0 or another value < min_avail.
E: alsa-sink.c: snd_pcm_mmap_commit: Device or resource busy

This makes it seem like a kernel error. Any help troubleshooting this bug would be very helpful.

[Asif Youssuff (yoasif)]

I did ran alsa-info after audio stopped playing, and this is the URL: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=1999063f9c7c364d9d6bc7339b78529dc8d1fdec

[István Miklós Antal (djdarkmanx)]

AplayDevices:
 **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC1200 Analog [ALC1200 Analog]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Architecture: i386
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: djdarkman 8371 F.... pulseaudio
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xffe00000 irq 16'
   Mixer name : 'Realtek ALC1200'
   Components : 'HDA:10ec0888,14620110,00100101'
   Controls : 22
   Simple ctrls : 14
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
HibernationDevice: RESUME=/dev/sda2
MachineType: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD U-100
Package: linux (not installed)
PccardctlIdent:

PccardctlStatus:

ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=fb540d5d-b207-40c4-8f40-6613344ba761 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-10.30-generic
RelatedPackageVersions: linux-firmware 1.16
RfKill:

Tags: ubuntu-unr
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-10-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare
WpaSupplicantLog:

dmi.bios.date: 07/16/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 4.6.3
dmi.board.asset.tag: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: U-100
dmi.board.vendor: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD
dmi.board.version: Ver.001
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD
dmi.chassis.version: Ver.001
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr4.6.3:bd07/16/2008:svnMICRO-STARINTERNATIONALCO.,LTD:pnU-100:pvrVer.001:rvnMICRO-STARINTERNATIONALCO.,LTD:rnU-100:rvrVer.001:cvnMICRO-STARINTERNATIONALCO.,LTD:ct3:cvrVer.001:
dmi.product.name: U-100
dmi.product.version: Ver.001
dmi.sys.vendor: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD

[István Miklós Antal (djdarkmanx)]

I have the same problem, for some reason pulseaudio seems to freeze after some time, and it seems to go hard on system resources too, ps line: 1000 4389 27.2 0.5 95524 5456 ? Rsl 19:41 35:53 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start

27% CPU(1.6GHz) seems a little too much for just a sound server in my opinion.

[zyrorl (zyrorl)]

i have this exact same problem... i've also had times where pulseaudio will hit 90% cpu.
killing and restarting pulseaudio fixes this but only temporarily before it happens again.

[Budhajeewa (budhajeewa)]

I am too having the same problem. When the playback stops in middle of playing a file, it sounds "grrrrrrrrrrrr" until I click or hit anything (the desktop, audio controller, virtually anything on the screen!) some times.

[Vikram Dhillon (dhillon-v10)]

Unfortunately it seems this bug is still an issue. Can you confirm this issue exists with the most recent Lucid Lynx 10.04 release - http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid/alpha-2/. If the issue remains in Lucid, please test the latest 2.6.32 upstream kernel build - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Let us know your results. Thanks.

[Patrick Loyatum (kimutai)]

Seriously guys, what's the deal with this bug? it's been around for
almost 4 months now!

On 01/24/2010 02:41 AM, Vikram Dhillon wrote:
> Unfortunately it seems this bug is still an issue. Can you confirm this
> issue exists with the most recent Lucid Lynx 10.04 release -
> http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid/alpha-2/. If the issue remains
> in Lucid, please test the latest 2.6.32 upstream kernel build -
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Let us know your
> results. Thanks.
>
> ** Changed in: linux (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>

--
*PKL*

[István Miklós Antal (djdarkmanx)]

This issue was fixed, before release of Karmic if I remember correctly, the one Vikram Dhillon experiences could be another similar issue or a regression in Lucid but in my opinion it's not this reported issue.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug was filed against a series that is no longer supported and so is being marked as Won't Fix. If this issue still exists in a supported series, please file a new bug.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.