Having pulseaudio installed causes segmentation fault when exiting from playing video

[Andy]

Hi, after upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04 (stable) I consistently get a segmentation fault when exiting from playing video. The last line in the console is

2009-04-24 11:32:57.358 TV: Attempting to change from WatchingPreRecorded to None

This happend when exiting from playing recordings and also exiting from live tv.

I have attached the backtrace and valgrind output.

[MarcRandolph (mrand)]

Upstream mythtv trac 6415 describes a very similar problem

[LeeWells (gtp-tj)]

I'm seeing the exact same problem, and found that un-installing pulseaudio fixes it.

I debugged it a bit. Its the SpawnDecode thread that segfaults, but it only happens after SpawnDecode returns. After chasing it a bit further, it seems the problem is happenning during audio initialization down in snd_pcm_open() in libasound2.... but this is my first time trying to debug MythTV & libasound2, so that bit of info should be verified by someone more familiar with that code.

But chasing it into libasound2 is what prompted me to try removing pulseaudio.

[LeeWells (gtp-tj)]

A bit more info here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+bug/368996

Problem came back when I reinstalled pulseaudio, but re-installing libavcodec and libavutil seems
to have fixed it.

[Andy (acc-launchpad)]

yes, that fixed it for me too. Uninstalled pulseaudio, rebooted. Problem fixed. Installed pulseaudio and problem returned. Marked libavutil49 3:0.svn20090303-1ubuntu6 and libavcodec52 3:0.svn20090303-1ubuntu6 for re-install in synaptic and this resolved the problem.

[harvest316 (harvest316)]

Uninstalled pulseaudio and it fixed it.
What was the good of pulseaudio anyway?
Am hoping someone will post here when this bug is fixed, so I can reinstall pulseaudio, if anyone can explain why I need it.

PS: You have to uninstall ubuntu-desktop too, but this has no impact as its just a wrapper.

[Garry Leach (garry-leach)]

I followed the steps as mentioned by Andy, but I had the same result as kit on (on bug report 366002). So I uninstalled pulseaudio, & Myth seems OK now.

Like harvest316, I would be interested to know what pulseaudio is for.

[MarcRandolph (mrand)]

See also: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7174097#post7174097

[MarcRandolph (mrand)]

We're going to have to live with work-arounds regarding pulseaudio until things settle down more. Thank you for your bug report, and please do not let the closing of this bug deter you from opening bugs regarding other problems you find with Mythbuntu!