[pulseaudio-discuss] System freeze

[dirkydirk]

On Sat, 2011-11-19 at 10:27 +0100, Daniel Mack wrote:
> On 11/18/2011 07:23 PM, dirkydirk wrote:
> > You are right, I don't know for sure if it's a PA problem at all, but I
> > have to start looking somewhere ;)
> > 
> > With the same result, a complete system lockup, I have tried kernels
> > 3.1.0 and 2.6.37, rhythmbox and banshee (both use gstreamer),
> > flashplayer 10 and 11, firefox 8. Oopses are none in the logs.
> 
> Did you try with a different sound card?

Have no other card available. PA volume control shows three output
devices: the SB card, onboard sound, and some HDMI audio from the
graphics card. As I understand, pa sends audio to all of these devices
in parallel, doesn't it? Or is it possible to deactivate specific
devices (other that to just mute them, which I tried with no
improvement).

> 
> > What kind of stress tests do you have in mind?
> 
> I was thinking about heavy IO load in general, high CPU usage, all the
> like. But your problem seems to be audio related.

Am not sure if that is necessary. I can reproduce the crash predictably:
open several flashs in firefox and play music from rhythmbox; nirvana
waits around the next corner.
(I really experienced that Metallica crashes sooner than Santana...
hmmm...)

> > Before the update to gnome 3 I had an alsa-only environment, and this
> > lockup did not occur. Apart from updated libraries, PA is the only new
> > component in the system concerning audio, this is why I was looking here
> > first. Because gnome 3 depends on PA, de-installing it to have an
> > alsa-only environment again is not an option.
> > 
> > I have attached the output of "pulseaudio -vvvvv". After the last line,
> > the crash happened. But on a previous run, there was a different last
> > line...
> > 
> > Is it possible to tell gstreamer to not use pa but only alsa? 
> 
> Sure. Just use the 'alsasink' component, and temporarily disable
> pulseaudio by prefixing the command with 'pasuspender'.

With "gstreamer-properties" UI I selected alsa, but where do I find the
setting to be 'pasuspender'ed?

Dirk

> 
> Daniel
> 
> 
> > On Fri, 2011-11-18 at 17:57 +0100, Daniel Mack wrote:
> >> On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 5:35 PM, dirkydirk <dirkydirk at gmx.net> wrote:
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> recently I have updated my debian sid box to the latest gnome 3, which
> >>> installed also PulseAudio. Pleasantly, sound worked out of the box, even
> >>> flash, and my sound card SB XFi-Extreme Audio is detected and used (had
> >>> to use onboard sound for Linux prior to that).
> >>>
> >>> But alas, a big problem occurs: every time I play music via a gstreamer
> >>> app (rhythmbox) and play a flash in firefox, after a minute or so the
> >>> whole system freezes. I mean, the whole system: no mouse, no keyboard,
> >>> even ssh from a different computer does not work. And sound loops
> >>> endlessly.
> >>
> >> This is very unlikely a PulseAudio problem. Which kernel are you
> >> using? Do you see any Oopses in the logs after rebooting? Did you
> >> stress-test your system under different circumstances? I would also
> >> suggest you to test audio without PulseAudio, just ALSA natively, just
> >> to rule out some factors.
> >>
> >>
> >> Daniel
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> pulseaudio-discuss mailing list
> >> pulseaudio-discuss at lists.freedesktop.org
> >> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/pulseaudio-discuss
> > 
> > 
> > 
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