[gutsy] esd makes diverse gnome apps freeze

[Felipe Gil Castiñeira]

Binary package hint: esound

I have installed gutsy in three different computers. Two of them work fine, but in the third one most of the gnome applications freeze after a random time. Typical apps with problems are:
  - evince
  - gnome-panel
  - gvim
  - thunderbird
  - gthumb
  - ...

For example, evince runs fine once but it freezes in the next execution. Running it with strace yields something like:
==========
connect(24, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path="/tmp/.esd/socket"}, 18) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, {0x2ae86551b980, [PIPE], SA_RESTORER|SA_RESTART, 0x2ae862e342c0}, {SIG_IGN}, 8) = 0
open("/home/user/.esd_auth", O_RDONLY) = 25
read(25, "\261V\337\215\303\376\227\274\311\355\376\376\316\16x\275"..., 16) = 16
write(24, "\261V\337\215\303\376\227\274\311\355\376\376\316\16x\275"..., 16) = 16
write(24, "NDNE", 4) = 4
read(24, <unfinished ...>
==========

Killing esd solves the problem, so far.

The problem is present with the two kernels I have tested (Linux 2.6.22-6-generic and 2.6.20-13-generic). My computer is an "Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz", with an "Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)". I am working with the *64 bits* Ubuntu 7.10 version.

[Jacob Peddicord (jpeddicord)]

I can confirm this. I was searching all over for a bug with random GNOME app freezes, and came across this one. My desktop is (was) currently frozen, but as soon as I ran killall esd it all came back to life.

I'm running the 32-bit version of Gutsy on the latest kernel, and I get very similar results to the above.

[Jacob Peddicord (jpeddicord)]

I have discovered a way to increase the probability this will happen:

System > Preferences > Sound; Sounds tab:
Click arbitrary Play buttons quickly. Sometimes nothing will happen but a bunch of sounds playing, but occasionally the sound applet will freeze, and in turn, ESD.

Another strange factor in this is a high connection count. The more connections you have open, the better chance this will happen. Easy way to try this: BitTorrent with 100+ connections. (This still happens with a lower connection count, however it doesn't seem to be as often. May just be a coincidence.)

[Peter Clifton (pcjc2)]

I can confirm on 2.6.22-8-generic kernel

[Jonh Wendell (wendell)]

Confirming, it happens with me too.

[Jonh Wendell (wendell)]

I've applied a patch available in GNOME Bugzilla and made a package.

Could you try, and see if it solves our problem?

The packages are here: http://people.ubuntu-br.org/~jwendell/esd

Please, try to report a feedback as soon as possible, once gutsy is on the way.

Thanks.

[Felipe Gil Castiñeira (xil)]

I have built the amd64 packages with the patch applied, and it seems the problem appears again (gnome-panel gets frozen).

In the next hours I will perform some tests (just now I'm far from the computer with the problem), in order to confirm that the problem is again esd.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Seems like the patch didn't help. The real solution for this is to uninstall esound. Really, it makes life sooo much better, and we do not install it by default any more either. I actually thought that it gets uninstalled on upgrades even.

In Hardy we will hopefully replace it with PulseAudio.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I unsubscribed ubuntu-main-sponsors. Please resubscribe if there is a tested patch.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

This symptom should be fixed with seb's upload to hardy of -0ubuntu7.

[Neal McBurnett (nealmcb)]

evince is hanging for me in the same sort of way. I'm running hardy-proposed, with pulse audio etc. no "esd" process is running.
The only "esd" string in dpkg -l is libesd-alsa0.

$ strace evince file.pdf
....
socket(PF_FILE, SOCK_STREAM, 0) = 16
fcntl(16, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0
setsockopt(16, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, [1], 4) = 0
connect(16, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path="/tmp/.esd-6265/socket"}, 23) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, {0x7f4d176fa5d0, [PIPE], SA_RESTORER|SA_RESTART, 0x7f4d19e8e100}, {SIG_IGN}, 8) = 0
open("/home/neal/.esd_auth", O_RDONLY) = 17
read(17, "\271t k\336\267j\1771\274\'V\25\2151\335", 16) = 16
write(16, "\271t k\336\267j\1771\274\'V\25\2151\335", 16) = 16
write(16, "NDNE", 4) = 4
read(16,

[hang]

I've had recent possibly-related hangs with gthumb, gnome panel etc.

This could be related to recently starting using padevchooser and e.g. enabling network access.

[Jacob Peddicord (jpeddicord)]

Neal:
The reason "esd" is not running is because ESD was replaced with PulseAudio in 8.04, in which case you would want to look for a "pulseaudio" process instead.

[Neal McBurnett (nealmcb)]

Well, killing the pulseaudio process has now fixed my sound problem a few times. I can't reproduce the problem at will though.

Note that since this is for a different daemon, it may not really be the same bug. And remember this is on hardy for me.

Disabling network access in padevchooser (i.e. back to the default) didn't seem to help.

[Iuri Diniz (iuridiniz)]

I think I've reported the same bug in:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/280346 #280346

[Octavio Alvarez (alvarezp)]

Is there any avance on this bug? It is a real productivity stopper, and it has not been fixed even though this is an LTS version. Not only that, but we've not seen any feedback.

Other than what has already been said, I don't know what info would be useful to pinpoint the bug.

Is there any particular information that we as a community can provide to the developers? Any hardware info, straces, dmesg, or anything else?

[Tim Richardson (tim-richardson)]

I have the same problem with Debian Lenny.
I am using pulseaudio. The problem occurs when I have system sounds turned on.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=499081

[Tim Richardson (tim-richardson)]

See my upstream report

http://pulseaudio.org/ticket/381

[gf (gf-interlinks-deactivatedaccount)]

Hello Felipe,
Thank you for submitting this bug and reporting a problem with the esound package. You made this bug report in 2007 and there have been several versions of Ubuntu since then.

Could you confirm that this is no longer a problem and that we can close the ticket?
If it is still a problem, are you still interested in finding a solution to this bug?
If you are, could you let us know and, in the current version, could you run the following (only once):
apport-collect 125308
and upload the updated logs and and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

Thank you again for helping make Ubuntu better.
G