amaroK crashing

nitro322 · Post by **nitro322** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 4:06 am

I have a problem with amaroK crashing. This happens during song changes, though it seems random as to when it actually crashes. Eg, it may crash after only playing 2 songs, or it may not crash until after 20. When I run amarok from the command line, I always get this error message when it crashes:

amarokapp: pcm.c:938: snd_pcm_state: Assertion `pcm' failed.

Has anyone ever seen that before? I tried search Google, but couldn't find anything useful. Any help would really be appreciated.

I'm currently running amaroK 1.4.1-r2, using the MySQL database backend. I've also tried 1.3.8, 1.3.9, and 1.4.0, but I have crashing issues with all of them.

markey · Post by **markey** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:57 am

Looks like an ALSA issue. Try upgrading ALSA and xine-lib.

Also disable crossfading in Amarok, and kill all running sound servers (artsd and friends). Possibly your dmix isn't working right.

nitro322 · Post by **nitro322** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 3:33 am

Thanks for the suggestions, markey. I tried rebuilding xine-lib (1.1.2-r2 is the only version in portage, so nothing to upgrade to), but no luck. I could not upgrade ALSA because I'm running the kernel version. I've tried to run the standalone version numerous times in the past and have always had trouble with it, so I'd prefer to stick to something halfway stable for now.

Crossfading was already disabled, and I do not run any sound servers (I use KDE, but have everything setup to use ALSA directly).

I'm not sure what you mean by dmix. I'd be happy to look into it, though. What do I need to check?

nitro322 · Post by **nitro322** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 4:45 am

Does anyone else have any suggestions? Has anyone even seen this error message before? I'm still having the same issue, and ran out of ideas to fix it long ago.

Any suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks.

nitro322 · Post by **nitro322** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 4:15 am

Ok, how about changing directions here... Since this crash always occurs during a song change, perhaps it's trying to play an invalid file. If I can determine which file it's about to start playing when it crashes, maybe I can figure something out by investigating that file.

The problem, though, is that I need amaroK to print out the track name it's about to start playing before it actually begins playing. Does anyone know how I can do this? Is it possible to tell amaroK to log this information? Is it possible to have it display this information on the command line somehow?

Again, any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Flameeyes · Post by **Flameeyes** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 10:06 pm

The crash (that's not much of a crash but rather a failed assertion) is from inside alsa-lib. Which version of alsa-lib are you using? Which version of the kernel drivers (cat /proc/asound/version)? If they are misaligned, it might be that.

Another problem might be if ALSA cannot access your soundcard hardware, if it's using hardware mixing for instance (VIA82Cxxx cards have, for instance, a 4-way hardware mixing.. but often you use more than 4 acquired streams).

If you have an asound.conf, please tell me and copy-paste here if it's not too long.

I would suggest to use external driver anyway, if you have any kind of trouble with that, it's usually simpler to diagnose than the in-kernel drivers problems.

Flameeyes · Post by **Flameeyes** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 10:13 pm

Oh forgot to say, try to follow the backtraces guide to see where the problem happens, so that I can try to dig the code and find which assertion fails and why

If you try 1.0.13_rc1, make sure you enable the debug useflag, or the assertions will be disabled so it won't crash but might behave strangely.
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nitro322 · Post by **nitro322** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 3:31 am

Thanks, for the response, flameeyes. I don't currently have access to this particular box, but I should tomorrow. I'll post the results of your suggestions as soon as I can.

nitro322 · Post by **nitro322** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 2:24 pm

Ok, to answer the questions in your first post.

kernel version info:

Code: Select all

$ uname -a
Linux dogzilla 2.6.17-gentoo-r4 #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Aug 10 18:52:53 CDT 2006 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) MP 2400+ GNU/Linux
$ cat /proc/asound/version
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.11rc4 (Wed Mar 22 10:27:24 2006 UTC).

ALSA version info:

Code: Select all

$ esearch -cI alsa
[ I] media-libs/alsa-lib (1.0.11-r1):  Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Library
[ I] media-plugins/xmms-alsa (1.2.10-r2):  Xmms Plugin: xmms-alsa
[ I] media-sound/alsa-headers (1.0.11):  Header files for Advanced Linux Sound Architecture kernel modules
[ I] media-sound/alsa-utils (1.0.11):  Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Utils (alsactl, alsamixer, etc.)

I can't necessarily rule out the hardware mixing issue, but I think it's unlikely. I have an Audigy2, so it should be able to handle just about as many simultaneous streams as I can through at it.

Also, I've never head this issue with XMMS, or any other application that plays audio, only amaroK.

I don't have an asound.conf, but I do have a .asoundrc, if that's what you mean. I use it to setup proper 5.1 mixing:

Code: Select all

$ cat ../.asoundrc
pcm.proper51 {
    type route
    slave.pcm surround51
    slave.channels 6
    ttable.0.0 1
    ttable.1.4 1
    ttable.2.1 1
    ttable.3.2 1
    ttable.4.3 1
    ttable.5.5 1
}

I also have /etc/asound.state, but I'm assuming you don't want that. If you think it'll help, though, I'll be happy to post it as well.

Any ideas?

Also, as I stated above, I've had bad experience trying to run the standalone version of ALSA, so if possible I'd prefer to use the kernel driver, as it seems to simply work (in general) much more reliably for me. Of course, I'd certainly be willing to give it another try for testing. Just let me know.

I'll also work on getting the backtraces information to you. I've already enabled bugging for amaroK, but it didn't tell me anything useful. Of course, that was before you pointed out that the error was coming from alsa-lib.

Flameeyes · Post by **Flameeyes** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 12:11 pm

With an Audigy, it should just use hardware mixing and be done with that, so it's not the case at all.

If you can, I'd ask you to try the alsa-driver drivers. And knowing the past with audigy and similar cards, it's better if you do a revdep-rebuild --soname libasound.so.2 to rebuild everything linked to alsa, it might have changed ABI in the mean time.

nitro322 · Post by **nitro322** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 2:46 am

I just upgraded to alsa-driver, using version 1.0.12, and I actually have sound. Off to a good start, at least.

It'll take some time before I can determine whether or not this resolves amaroK issue. As I said previously, it crashes on a seemingly random basis, so I'll just need to let it play for a while and see what it does.

I'll report back in a couple days. Thanks for the suggestions, Diego.