pulseaudio: snd_pcm_avail_update() returned a value that is exceptionally large

[Anand Kumria]

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

Jan 26 08:02:37 eve pulseaudio[24162]: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_avail_update() returned a value that is exceptionally large: 205324 bytes (1163 ms) Most likely this is an ALSA driver bug. Please report this issue to the PulseAudio developers.

This is possibly:

http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/396

or:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=462200

anand@eve[~]% lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 83)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
02:01.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection (rev 05)
02:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI7420 CardBus Controller
02:04.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI7420 CardBus Controller
02:04.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI7x20 1394a-2000 OHCI Two-Port PHY/Link-Layer Controller
02:04.3 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCI7420/7620 Combo CardBus, 1394a-2000 OHCI and SD/MS-Pro Controller
02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
anand@eve[~]% lsmod | grep snd
snd_atiixp_modem 20360 0
snd_via82xx_modem 19336 0
snd_intel8x0m 22028 5
snd_intel8x0 37532 3
snd_ac97_codec 112292 4 snd_atiixp_modem,snd_via82xx_modem,snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0
ac97_bus 9856 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm 82820 7 snd_atiixp_modem,snd_via82xx_modem,snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec
snd_seq 56880 0
snd_timer 29704 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device 14988 1 snd_seq
snd 62628 23 snd_atiixp_modem,snd_via82xx_modem,snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
soundcore 15200 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 16904 5 snd_atiixp_modem,snd_via82xx_modem,snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
anand@eve[~]%

However I have the latest version of pulseaudio, which includes:

http://git.0pointer.de/?p=pulseaudio.git;a=commitdiff;h=b712e7b13dd6aed3e56eaee423ff071d6f0ce2c2

So this kind of error should not really be occuring from my brief glance at things.

Thanks,
Anand

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: pulseaudio 0.9.14-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=C
 SHELL=/usr/bin/zsh
SourcePackage: pulseaudio
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-6-generic i686

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Worked around by falling back to interrupt-based buffer semantics

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package pulseaudio - 0.9.14-0ubuntu6

---------------
pulseaudio (0.9.14-0ubuntu6) jaunty; urgency=low

  * 0004_disable_autospawn.patch: Disable this patch. Doing so
    allows the daemon to spawn if not already running, which
    works around LP: #191027, #204272
  * 0012_clarify_driver_error_redirect_to_alsa_devs.patch:
    - Only log POLL* being set if tsched is used so that syslog
      isn't filled with innocuous messages when we set tsched=0
      (see 0030 below) (LP: #323712),
    - Hint 'linux' source package instead of 'alsa-driver' for
      Launchpad bug reports,
    - The debug-specific portion is only applicable to 0.9.14;
      0.9.15 enables a rate limiting module by default to work
      around this (and other) issues
  * 0029_fix_suspend_on_idle_null_race.patch: Handle sink case,
    too
  * 0030_set_tsched0.patch: Work around a shedload of (driver)
    bugs by falling back to interrupt-based buffer semantics
    (LP: #190754, #292880, #295519, #298494, #301755, #302964,
     LP: #319118, #323976, #324103, #326205, #326864)
  * Backport fixes from git HEAD:
    - 0031_fix_6chan_map.patch,
    - 0032_reinit_proplist.patch,
    - 0033_fix_pa-gcc-packedmalloc.patch,
    - 0034_bt_fixes.patch
  * Make invoking the stop target in the initscript not fail an
    upgrade (LP: #317921)
  * Previous upload (0.9.14-0ubuntu3) fixed LP: #321357
  * 01PulseAudio: use sudo -H to ensure that $HOME is, in fact,
    the user's when invoking pacmd for suspend/resume

 -- Daniel T Chen <email address hidden> Sun, 15 Feb 2009 02:35:26 -0500

[Martin Emrich (emme)]

I have pulseaudio 1:0.9.14-0ubuntu20.1 installed, and I still experience PA problems. Whenever there is high CPU load (compiling something, ...), My music stops, I hear only crackling noises and I see these messages:

D: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_avail_update() returned a value that is exceptionally large: 4611686018037680368 bytes (139430435728 ms) Most likely this is a Linux bug. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
D: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_avail_update() returned a value that is exceptionally large: 4611686018037637360 bytes (139430435646 ms) Most likely this is a Linux bug. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.

My soundcard:
00:14.2 Audio device [0403]: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) [1002:4383]
 Subsystem: Giga-byte Technology Device [1458:a022]
 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=slow >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 32, Cache Line Size: 4 bytes
 Interrupt: pin ? routed to IRQ 16
 Region 0: Memory at fe024000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
 Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Martin Emrich <email address hidden> wrote:
> I have pulseaudio 1:0.9.14-0ubuntu20.1  installed, and I still
> experience PA problems. Whenever there is high CPU load (compiling
> something, ...), My music stops, I hear only crackling noises and I see
> these messages:
>
> D: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_avail_update() returned a value that is exceptionally large: 4611686018037680368 bytes (139430435728 ms) Most likely this is a Linux bug. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
> D: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_avail_update() returned a value that is exceptionally large: 4611686018037637360 bytes (139430435646 ms) Most likely this is a Linux bug. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
>
> My soundcard:
> 00:14.2 Audio device [0403]: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) [1002:4383]
>        Subsystem: Giga-byte Technology Device [1458:a022]

The snd_pcm_avail_update() messages are actually caused by mid-layer
ALSA pcm-lib bugs. Are you also using the kernel from jaunty-proposed
(2.6.28-12.43-generic)?

Also, note that there is a *separate* bug affecting cpu limit
behaviour in pulseaudio.

[Martin Emrich (emme)]

No, I have 2.6.28-11.42 installed (jaunty-proposed is enabled, but there is no newer version available).

Could you point me to the specific bug you mean? There are lots of bugs regarding pulseaudio and cpu usage...

[Martin Emrich (emme)]

Today, 2.6.28-12.43-generic appeared in jaunty, and I installed it.

This time, it took considerably longer until the music crashed (hours instead of minutes), but finally the crackling noise was back and "pulseaudio -vv" printed tons of these messages again:

D: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_avail_update() returned a value that is exceptionally large: 4611686018107775812 bytes (139430568183 ms) Most likely this is a Linux bug. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
D: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_avail_update() returned a value that is exceptionally large: 4611686018107732804 bytes (139430568102 ms) Most likely this is a Linux bug. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
D: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_avail_update() returned a value that is exceptionally large: 4611686018107689796 bytes (139430568021 ms) Most likely this is a Linux bug. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
D: alsa-util.c: snd_pcm_avail_update() returned a value that is exceptionally large: 4611686018107646788 bytes (139430567939 ms) Most likely this is a Linux bug. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.

Ciao

Martin

[Martin Emrich (emme)]

It still happens frequently, it apparently was only coincidence that it held out for hours after the new kernel was installed.

I also tried with and without "tsched=0", it makes no difference.

Ciao

Martin