alsa suddenly stopped working (dmix socket disappeared)
This bug report was converted into a question: question #78789: alsa suddenly stopped working (dmix socket disappeared).
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
alsa-lib (Ubuntu) |
Invalid
|
Low
|
Ubuntu Audio Team |
Bug Description
Binary package hint: libasound2
Sound suddenly stopped working for me in the middle of a session (i.e. no package upgrades, no reboots, no hardware changes). I use esd which plays through alsa, which uses dmix for mixing (the default configuration).
Playing sound through /dev/dsp works. Applications that use ALSA fail.
If I try to run, e.g., alsaplayer on a sound file, I see
ALSA lib pcm_direct.
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.
snd_pcm_open: No such file or directory (default)
Failed to initialize plugin!
Failed to register plugin: /usr/lib/
Failed to load output plugin "alsa". Trying defaults.
ALSA lib pcm_direct.
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.
snd_pcm_open: No such file or directory (default)
Failed to initialize plugin!
/usr/lib/
Related branches
Changed in alsa-lib: | |
assignee: | nobody → ubuntu-audio |
importance: | Undecided → Low |
Changed in alsa-lib (Ubuntu): | |
status: | Fix Released → Invalid |
I managed to fix the error with some deep black magic:
strace -o /tmp/out mplayer -ao alsa file.mp3
watch it bomb out with an error
grep shmget /tmp/out
get one important line:
shmget(5678293, 384, IPC_CREAT|0660) = 48824355
shmrm -M 5678293
Looks like the process that previously acted as the dmix server died, but did not free the SysV shared memory segment.
I may have caused the problem by killing a firefox instance that stayed behind (with its 400 megs of virtual memory allocated) after I closed all of its windows.