[karmic] ALSA driver snd_hda_intel broken according to PulseAudio

[Dominik George]

This bug was fixed in jaunty, but in karmic it exists. The ALSA driver snd_hda_intel does weird things, according to PulseAudio:

E: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_avail() returns a value that is extraordinarily large: 423680 bytes (2401 ms).
E: alsa-util.c: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_hda_intel'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
E: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_dump():
E: alsa-util.c: Soft volume PCM
E: alsa-util.c: Control: PCM Playback Volume
E: alsa-util.c: min_dB: -51
E: alsa-util.c: max_dB: 0
E: alsa-util.c: resolution: 256
E: alsa-util.c: Its setup is:
E: alsa-util.c: stream : PLAYBACK
E: alsa-util.c: access : MMAP_INTERLEAVED
E: alsa-util.c: format : S16_LE
E: alsa-util.c: subformat : STD
E: alsa-util.c: channels : 2
E: alsa-util.c: rate : 44100
E: alsa-util.c: exact rate : 44100 (44100/1)
E: alsa-util.c: msbits : 16
E: alsa-util.c: buffer_size : 16384
E: alsa-util.c: period_size : 8192
E: alsa-util.c: period_time : 185759
E: alsa-util.c: tstamp_mode : ENABLE
E: alsa-util.c: period_step : 1
E: alsa-util.c: avail_min : 15502
E: alsa-util.c: period_event : 0
E: alsa-util.c: start_threshold : -1
E: alsa-util.c: stop_threshold : 4611686018427387904
E: alsa-util.c: silence_threshold: 0
E: alsa-util.c: silence_size : 0
E: alsa-util.c: boundary : 4611686018427387904
E: alsa-util.c: Slave: Hardware PCM card 0 'HDA Intel' device 0 subdevice 0
E: alsa-util.c: Its setup is:
E: alsa-util.c: stream : PLAYBACK
E: alsa-util.c: access : MMAP_INTERLEAVED
E: alsa-util.c: format : S16_LE
E: alsa-util.c: subformat : STD
E: alsa-util.c: channels : 2
E: alsa-util.c: rate : 44100
E: alsa-util.c: exact rate : 44100 (44100/1)
E: alsa-util.c: msbits : 16
E: alsa-util.c: buffer_size : 16384
E: alsa-util.c: period_size : 8192
E: alsa-util.c: period_time : 185759
E: alsa-util.c: tstamp_mode : ENABLE
E: alsa-util.c: period_step : 1
E: alsa-util.c: avail_min : 15502
E: alsa-util.c: period_event : 0
E: alsa-util.c: start_threshold : -1
E: alsa-util.c: stop_threshold : 4611686018427387904
E: alsa-util.c: silence_threshold: 0
E: alsa-util.c: silence_size : 0
E: alsa-util.c: boundary : 4611686018427387904
E: alsa-util.c: appl_ptr : 56512
E: alsa-util.c: hw_ptr : 146048

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.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
ArecordDevices:
 **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC262 Analog [ALC262 Analog]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: nik 18409 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p: nik 18409 F...m pulseaudio
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xd5400000 irq 22'
   Mixer name : 'Realtek ALC262'
   Components : 'HDA:10ec0262,144dc519,00100002 HDA:11c11040,2118144d,00100200'
   Controls : 29
   Simple ctrls : 18
CheckboxSubmission: 30d467e6475d4dfbc04d4055ab184327
CheckboxSystem: 4d95572e5316e611a54a34bb97dbd8fe
Date: Wed Sep 16 12:12:51 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=01ff39de-2b78-4d3a-8a3b-f56e47163017
MachineType: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. SR700
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: linux-image-2.6.31-10-generic 2.6.31-10.32
PccardctlIdent:

PccardctlStatus:

ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=11d63452-9e97-4dec-a200-7234e7a9b9bd ro quiet
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/zsh
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-10.32-generic
RelatedPackageVersions:
 linux-backports-modules-2.6.31-10-generic N/A
 linux-firmware 1.16
RfKill:
 0: phy0: Wireless LAN
  Soft blocked: no
  Hard blocked: no
SourcePackage: linux
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-10-generic x86_64
UserAsoundrc:

WpaSupplicantLog:

dmi.bios.date: 05/21/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: Phoenix Technologies LTD
dmi.bios.version: 07SR
dmi.board.name: SR700
dmi.board.vendor: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Tag
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
dmi.chassis.version: N/A
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnPhoenixTechnologiesLTD:bvr07SR:bd05/21/2008:svnSAMSUNGELECTRONICSCO.,LTD.:pnSR700:pvr07SR:rvnSAMSUNGELECTRONICSCO.,LTD.:rnSR700:rvr:cvnSAMSUNGELECTRONICSCO.,LTD.:ct10:cvrN/A:
dmi.product.name: SR700
dmi.product.version: 07SR
dmi.sys.vendor: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.

[Dominik George (natureshadow)]

Translated output to English.

[Bryan Quigley (bryanquigley)]

I got a similar error, (user log attached) except my computer slowed down and became unresponsive (and the very large number was negative. Same bug?

[Duane Hinnen (duanedesign)]

I have the error mentioned in my logs. I have been experiencing Rhythmbox crashes and a slow unresponsive system. I am attaching my sys.log.

results of:
duanedesign@duanedesign-laptop:/usr$ sudo fuser -v /dev/dsp* /dev/snd/*
                                    USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
/dev/snd/controlC0: duanedesign 21848 F.... pulseaudio
/dev/snd/pcmC0D0p: duanedesign 21848 F...m pulseaudio

also i am getting this in my log

Oct 7 21:04:25 duanedesign-laptop pulseaudio[1744]: reserve-wrap.c: Failed to acquire reservation lock on device 'Audio0': Input/output error
Oct 7 21:06:23 duanedesign-laptop pulseaudio[1744]: reserve-wrap.c: Failed to acquire reservation lock on device 'Audio0': Input/output error
Oct 7 21:06:33 duanedesign-laptop pulseaudio[1744]: ratelimit.c: 45 events suppressed
Oct 7 21:06:42 duanedesign-laptop pulseaudio[1744]: reserve-wrap.c: Failed to acquire reservation lock on device 'Audio0': Input/output error
Oct 7 21:06:42 duanedesign-laptop pulseaudio[1744]: ratelimit.c: 47 events suppressed

[Duane Hinnen (duanedesign)]

attached are results of: killall pulseaudio;pulseaudio -vvvv

[Graham Poulter (grahampo)]

I have gotten the following in the context of stuttering sound from a VirtualBox 3 Windows 7 guest and Ubuntu Karmic x64 host. The VirtualBox sound stuttering (and this error) started on upgrade to Karmic:

pulseaudio[2653]: alsa-sink.c: ALSA woke us up to write new data to the device, but there was actually nothing to write!
pulseaudio[2653]: alsa-sink.c: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_hda_intel'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
pulseaudio[2653]: alsa-sink.c: We were woken up with POLLOUT set -- however a subsequent snd_pcm_avail() returned 0 or another value < min_avail.

My audio device:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB High Definition Audio Controller (rev 09)

[Adrian Busolini (aab-cs)]

I appear to have the same here on an upgrade to Ubuntu Karmic 32bit. It tends to happen more often with multiple audio sources playing simultaneously, and particularly with high bitrate FLAC audio. The app (Rhythmbox/Listen) will typically run with 100pc CPU utilisation thereafter, albeit successfully.

Sound card is a PCI Creative X-Fi XtremeAudio running under CA0106.

System details and syslog attached.

[H.-Dirk Schmitt (dirk-computer42)]

Here the same problem.
As temporary workaround I have downloaded and installed the following files from jaunty:

libpulse0_0.9.15-3ubuntu1~ppa2_amd64.deb
pulseaudio-module-hal_0.9.15-3ubuntu1~ppa2_amd64.deb
pulseaudio_0.9.15-3ubuntu1~ppa2_amd64.deb
pulseaudio-utils_0.9.15-3ubuntu1~ppa2_amd64.deb

[Murz (murznn)]

Same problem on Kamic AMD64 and
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
on AsRock A780GM-LE motherboard.

[tc7 (tc7)]

I've noticed a problem with pulseaudio too - every so often my machine (msigx620 with 4MB RAM) starts running really slow. System Monitor showed (today) 1.8GB of virtual memory used by pulseaudio - without producing any sound. Uptime 5:35.

Otherwise Karmic is running pretty well.

uname -a
2.6.31-15-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 10 14:53:52 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Machine is nice and responsive now (once pulseaudio was killed).

Monitoring pulseaudio in System Monitor shows 2.8 MB of Virtual Memory being consumed per minute - so 1.8GB would take roughly 10 hours - so perhaps the rate varies.

I notice the following errors in the logs:
Nov 13 14:43:15 xx-msigx620 pulseaudio[15670]: ratelimit.c: 3 events suppressed
Nov 13 14:43:55 xx-msigx620 pulseaudio[15670]: alsa-sink.c: ALSA woke us up to write new data to the device, but there was actually nothing to write!
Nov 13 14:43:55 xx-msigx620 pulseaudio[15670]: alsa-sink.c: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_hda_intel'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
Nov 13 14:43:55 xx-msigx620 pulseaudio[15670]: alsa-sink.c: We were woken up with POLLOUT set -- however a subsequent snd_pcm_avail() returned 0 or another value < min_avail.
Nov 13 14:44:16 xx-msigx620 wpa_supplicant[1646]: CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS

lspci -v
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device 6510
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
 Memory at f9cf8000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
 Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
 Capabilities: [60] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable-
 Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00
 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel <?>
 Capabilities: [130] Root Complex Link <?>
 Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
 Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

[Ariel Faigon (ariel.faigon)]

Seeing this occasionally in my logs since upgrading to karmic:

Nov 20 00:02:06 ze pulseaudio[2870]: ratelimit.c: 73 events suppressed
Nov 20 00:10:50 ze pulseaudio[2870]: alsa-sink.c: ALSA woke us up to write new data to the device, but there was actually nothing to write!
Nov 20 00:10:50 ze pulseaudio[2870]: alsa-sink.c: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_hda_intel'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
Nov 20 00:10:50 ze pulseaudio[2870]: alsa-sink.c: We were woken up with POLLOUT set -- however a subsequent snd_pcm_avail() returned 0 or another value < min_avail.

Note that the first error occurs 8 second before the rest (last 3 lines) so it may be unrelated.

Ignoring the logs and moving to actual user experience with sound:

    * Ever since the switch to pulseaudio I get occasional random/spontaneous sound stutter, even when no sound is playing

    * Since the karmic upgrade the stutter events are much shorter in duration and much rarer in occurrence, so I'm speculating (and may be totally wrong) that the logs are evidence of better exception handling. Better get some log messages than actual sound stutter.

HTH

Anyway, reporting just in case this helps or adds any information.

[Niccolo (navico)]

I have the same weird behaviour from the sound system. HP Mini 2133, fresh Karmic installation. uname reports 2.6.31-14-generic.

pulse says "card not found - dummy audio".

After several trials I can say the problem most likely stands in the (configuration of) snd-hda-intel module. In fact, the original installation left me with no sound; after some googling I commented out in /etc/alsa-base.conf:

options snd-hda-intel power_save=10 power_save_controller=N

Still no sound. Then I added:

options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=1

This partially worked.

Now if I open Rhythmbox and start playing a long sequence of songs, no sound comes up, at the beginning. Then I do al "alsa force-reload" and the sound appears, even if still are WARNINGs complaining about fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system....

BUT THE SOUND IS NOT PERMANENT: randomly it disappears, maybe after 5 seconds or after 20 minutes; every time it disappears I just do an "alsa force-reload", always with rhythmbox playing, and it reappears for another (random) period of time.

Obviously the CPU load goes to 100% in sync when the sound is played, pulseaudio and pavucontrol accounting for a cumulative 50% of the load itself.

Intersting to note, on another HP machine (Compaq 6710b) upgraded from 9.04 this issue is unknown...

Hope it helps the ALSA guys. I'll keep in touch with this bug trail.

Niccolo

[tc7 (tc7)]

This bug has been addressed at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/424655

The bug is not resolved, but are two possible workarounds (choose the one you're most comfortable with).

1) replace udev 147~-6.1 with: udev 147~-6 (force version in synaptic)
  (NOTE: there is a known issue regarding auto mounting USB devices that is fixed in the later version. If this is a concern - see below)
2) rebuild udev 147~-6, apply patch to fix external USB device issue rebuild and deploy
(follow instructions by Martin Pit starting: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/424655/comments/54)

pulseaudio now sits at 6.4 MB resident and 260MB virtual - ah... machine performance is restored!

PS I found stopping rhythmbox, reinstalling pulseaudio, then killing pulseaudio sufficient (rather than rebooting). Pulseaudio is set to autostart by default.

[David Henningsson (diwic)]

Everybody,
first look through this list: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSoundProblems/KarmicCaveats

and if you're still having problems (and you're not the original bug reporter), please file separate bugs with this terminal command "ubuntu-bug -p alsa-base"
Also, if you have the possibility to check whether the problem still exists in current Lucid, that will be most helpful. Thank you!

[aslam karachiwala (akwala)]

This issue exists in the latest Lucid release...

$ cat /proc/asound/version
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.22.1.
Compiled on Apr 29 2010 for kernel 2.6.32-22-generic (SMP).

[David Duffey (dduffey)]

I can confirm I am getting the same in Lucid as the original poster.

pulseaudio[21342]: alsa-source.c: ALSA woke us up to read new data from the device, but there was actually nothing to read!
cylon pulseaudio[21342]: alsa-source.c: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_hda_intel'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
cylon pulseaudio[21342]: alsa-source.c: We were woken up with POLLIN set -- however a subsequent snd_pcm_avail() returned 0 or another value < min_avail.

[Raymond (superquad-vortex2)]

this is clearly underrun when appl_ptr 56512 is behind hw_ptr 146048

PA server only wrote 56512 frames but the sound card has already played 146048 frames, you can set "log-time=yes" in pulseaudio/daemon.conf to compute the time elapsed to verify that the underrun occur

the sound card is not stop because PA set stop threshold to boundary

E: alsa-util.c: Its setup is:
E: alsa-util.c: stream : PLAYBACK
E: alsa-util.c: access : MMAP_INTERLEAVED
E: alsa-util.c: format : S16_LE
E: alsa-util.c: subformat : STD
E: alsa-util.c: channels : 2
E: alsa-util.c: rate : 44100
E: alsa-util.c: exact rate : 44100 (44100/1)
E: alsa-util.c: msbits : 16
E: alsa-util.c: buffer_size : 16384
E: alsa-util.c: period_size : 8192
E: alsa-util.c: period_time : 185759
E: alsa-util.c: tstamp_mode : ENABLE
E: alsa-util.c: period_step : 1
E: alsa-util.c: avail_min : 15502
E: alsa-util.c: period_event : 0
E: alsa-util.c: start_threshold : -1
E: alsa-util.c: stop_threshold : 4611686018427387904
E: alsa-util.c: silence_threshold: 0
E: alsa-util.c: silence_size : 0
E: alsa-util.c: boundary : 4611686018427387904
E: alsa-util.c: appl_ptr : 56512
E: alsa-util.c: hw_ptr : 146048

[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.