[pulseaudio-discuss] cannot control input devices from pavucontrol + crashes in recording tab

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Peter Hercek at 28/12/10 16:05 did gyre and gimble:
> On 12/28/2010 04:10 PM, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>> 'Twas brillig, and Peter Hercek at 28/12/10 14:27 did gyre and gimble:
>>>
>>> Commenting out module-suspend-on-idle is not helping by itself. If I
>>> still load module-x11-publish then the servers exits on thinking it is
>>> idle anyway.
>>> If I comment out module-suspend-on-idle and also do not load
>>> module-x11-publish then the server does not exit on idle when plaing
>>> line-in stream through loopback only.
>> That is very odd. Publishing properties to the root window (which is all
>> module-x11-publish does really) should not affect the server exiting
>> structure. There are other X11 modules that will - module-x11-xsmp for
>> example should keep the server alive for the whole duration of the X11
>> session... seems very odd that x11-publish has any effect here.
>>
>> There is an idle timeout in daemon.conf which will come into play here.
>> It's set by default to 20s IIRC, but you can disable it completely (set
>> it to a negative number IIRC).
>>
>> Like I say tho', it's a bit odd that this would be needed here... I
>> think it's something to look into and investigate further.
> 
> Yes, 20 seconds is the time after which it stops to play. I have that
> time in daemon.conf. I listed modules loaded in pacmd and
> module-x11-publish is really the only one making the difference. If it
> should not have any impact then there is still a possibility of
> incorrect linking/building (I use only the archlinux published binaries
> now - so hopefully they did it right) or some kind of dangling pointer
> problem or whatever ...
> 
> I tried not to load x11-publish and load suspend-on-idle. Suprisingly it
> does not exit when playing line-in loopback source (if pulseaudio is not
> interacted with otherwise).
> 
> It almost looks like the two modules have switched names (but then they
> would be switched in pacmd list-modules too).
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 20K Dec 17 00:57
> /usr/lib/pulse-0.9.22/modules/module-suspend-on-idle.so*
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 12K Dec 17 00:57
> /usr/lib/pulse-0.9.22/modules/module-x11-publish.so*
> 
> Regardless of the combination of loading of suspend-on-idle and
> x11-publish. When I enter pacmd do list-modules and exit it, then
> pulseaudio server exits immediately too.
> 
> Hmm and pavucontrol and pavumemter has almost the same effect (it just
> does not exit immeditally but after about 20 secs after I exit
> pavucontrol or pavumeter).
> 
> It is a mess. Or maybe it is not. May be it exits 20 secs after startup
> or 20 secs after any apllication interacts with pulseaudio server ...
> and pacmd is special it allows the exit to happen but does not reset the
> counter back to 20 seconds.
> 
> Ok, if you have any idea what I should try, let me know. I may not do it
> immediately (especially if it is not something quick). But I'll do it
> eventually. I'm a developer, though I do not know pulseaudio ... not
> even at a level of a skilled user. Uff, I would prefer not to be a
> pulseaudio developer too :)
> 
> Hopefully some pulseaudio developer can repeat this (if it is not
> archlinux build/link problem).

:)

At least this is now a good work around for you. I'll try and see if
there is some kind of problem in the x11 code that could trigger this.

I doubt it's a build or link problem although you never know.

I'll try and reproduce here by disabling libcanberra
(CANBERRA_DRIVER=null) as it is another likely candidate for keeping PA
alive when it would otherwise die off and mask any issues.

I wonder if it's related to module-x11-xsmp... Is it loaded at all? What
desktop environment are you using? If xsmp is not loaded (e.g. it cannot
connect to an x11 manager, then perhaps some kind of weird issue is
triggered with x11-publish (as they will likely share some objects).

That's my only guess for the time being.

Col


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Colin Guthrie
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http://colin.guthr.ie/

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