Audio Device or Resource Busy [SOLVED!!!!!!!!]

Message

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Mon Aug 17, 2015 7:01 am

Edit, the original thread had an error that was corrected, please see below

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Mon Aug 17, 2015 7:18 am

IGNORE: In this entry I confirmed a working JACK

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Mon Aug 17, 2015 8:08 am

IGNORE: Here I realized there were several digital outputs that did not work with my current setup (analog)

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Tue Aug 18, 2015 4:44 am

Anybody able to assist with this? It has been a bit of a shifting problem, but this is the first HDMI auido device I have had to configure and I'm not really sure where to start. I have managed to get audio output so it appears I have the right driver, lspci returns this for Audio:

00:01.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Trinity HDMI Audio Controller
00:14.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH Azalia Controller (rev 01)

And ALSA see this:

Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
hdmi:CARD=HDMI,DEV=0
HDA ATI HDMI, HDMI 0
HDMI Audio Output
sysdefault:CARD=Generic
HD-Audio Generic, ALC887-VD Analog
Default Audio Device
front:CARD=Generic,DEV=0
HD-Audio Generic, ALC887-VD Analog
Front speakers
surround21:CARD=Generic,DEV=0
HD-Audio Generic, ALC887-VD Analog
2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers
surround40:CARD=Generic,DEV=0
HD-Audio Generic, ALC887-VD Analog
4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=Generic,DEV=0
HD-Audio Generic, ALC887-VD Analog
4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=Generic,DEV=0
HD-Audio Generic, ALC887-VD Analog
5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=Generic,DEV=0
HD-Audio Generic, ALC887-VD Analog
5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=Generic,DEV=0
HD-Audio Generic, ALC887-VD Analog
7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=Generic,DEV=0
HD-Audio Generic, ALC887-VD Digital
IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

Most of my programs are able to play through this hardware primarily the analog device since that is what I have for output now, but right now, my problem is that only one application can access the device at any given time. What is causing a lockdown of the device for each application? How can I allow all programs to access the device at any time?

Note, I did have pulseaudio on the system on the old hw, but I removed all trace of it and am now using JACK. I am trying to get a few things like vmpk and rosegarden working but right now I need to understand why the device is locked each time a program uses it.

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Wed Aug 19, 2015 6:07 am

Is anyone reading this? Would really appreciate even a nudge of help here. The problem persists that only one application can use the analog audio device at a time. Never ran into this problem before. If any further info is required, please do let me know. I am going out of town for work on Thursday and will be gone a week so if you respond within that time, please note a possible delay in response.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Wed Aug 19, 2015 7:45 pm

phobos13013,

A few hints. First, edit your post until you get responses. Replying to yourself drops your original post out of the unanswered posts search.
If you realise you made a mistake, its OK to delete your post and start a new topic. You cannot do that after you have a reply.

With ALSA, you get dmix for free. Pulseaudio is a wrapper around ALSA, so the same applies. dwix allows several sources to use sound togethor.
OSS, on the other hand only allows a single source to use the sound hardware at a time OSS is obsolete now but its still in the kernel.

What do you have in /dev/snd if it exists?
This should be all your ASLA devices.

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Wed Aug 19, 2015 8:33 pm

Neddy,
Thank you for the very diplomatic explanation of the posting etiquette. I am a bit flustered these days as my previous posts have explained; I digress and will heed the proper protocols in the future! PROMISE! But this has been an adventure moving this install across completely different hardware. And will be posting again (there is the issue of my network which didnt work out of the box pre-fire, so will definitely make sure when I go back to the network post, I will heed he who well advises.

For the rest, here is my /dev/snd which seems to match what alsa seems to see:

by-path
controlC0
controlC1
hwC0D0
hwC1D0
pcmC0D3p
pcmC1D0c
pcmC1D0p
pcmC1D1p
pcmC1D2c
seq
timer

C1 is the one that has all functions, C0 is just digital/spdif which I am not working with at this time, just the analog output.

I do not have pulse and do not know if i have dwix, how can i confirm its presence? I have jack installed but I am unable to get my programs to route through it successfully. Will be around for the next 6 hours or so then hit a sleep wall and out of town for a week, but please stick with the thread if you can.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Wed Aug 19, 2015 9:12 pm

phobos13013,

I'm in Scotland, so you won't see much more of me tonight.

Card1 is your analogue sound card, it can do digital as well but not at the same time.
Card0 is the digital audio over the HDMI output on your video card.

Your /dev/snd looks perfectly normal.

Card0 is the system default sound card but you would like it to be card1, so everything just worked and without JACK.

There is some good reading on the ALSA website.
I've also seen solutions posted on the forums.

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Wed Aug 19, 2015 9:16 pm

Only similar forum topic for me was this one: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-8 ... art-0.html

I followed its advice but asound configuration did not change it. Actually that made it not work following those procedures. Looks like this one goes unsolved until I take another stab at it in the future unless anyone else has some suggestion within the next few hours. THANKS!

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Wed Aug 19, 2015 9:37 pm

phobos13013,

Use google to search the forum. Enter your search term and in the search box add site:forumns.gentoo.org before you press return.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-998518.html

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 6:01 am

Hi,
Revisiting this issue; still bad audio environment on the new box. I have tried many different things but nothing seems to be working. My /etc/asound.conf appears as:

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 1
}

ctl.!default {
type hw
card 1
}

This at least points all audio to the correct audio device (the analog one), but still only one application can access the device at a time and flash in a browser is non-functional. I have seen threads like these:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1027174.html
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-8 ... art-0.html

And the one Neddy linked which was definitely in the vein of wave a dead chicken at it; none of them seem to resolve my situation.

This all very recent for me since the box before played audio fine although it was not an HDMI card. This definitely seems to have changed the game for audio configuration. Any guidance or pointers on getting an analog card with the specs listed in the entries below working for all applications is tremendously appreciated.

Bottom line is ALSA is not working on its own. Do not want to resort to pulse but since trying to work with JACK on the new box I am lost completely. At least with Pulse before I was able to get everything working fine. Is this the only option?

EmaRsk · Post by **EmaRsk** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 1:14 pm

ALSA by itself is a one-app-at-a-time driver. If you want to use more apps (of course you want) you need to set up dmix (but I never used it myself) or use an additional layer like Jack or Pulseaudio.

Working with Jack is pretty easy, actually: install qjackctl and use it to configure and start Jack. Set the buffer big enough that you don't have xruns (that is, audio buffer uder/overflows) and you should be good to go.

If you don't do pro-audio work, you can skip the real-time and low-latency optimizations, but if you want you can look here, here and of course here.

You'll need to instruct ALSA to use Jack for non-jack-aware software (otherwise, no audio from flash, for example):
install alsa-plugins with the "jack" USE flag enabled and put this in your ~/.asoundrc:

Code: Select all

ctl.!default { type hw; card 1 }

# ALSA JACK PCM PLUGIN
# http://jackaudio.org/faq/routing_alsa.html
# http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Asoundrc
pcm.jackplug {
        type plug
        slave { pcm "rawjack" }
        hint { description "JACK Audio Connection Kit" }
}
pcm.rawjack {
        type jack
        playback_ports {
                0 system:playback_1
                1 system:playback_2
        }
        capture_ports {
                0 system:capture_1
                1 system:capture_2
        }
}
pcm.!default { type plug; slave { pcm "rawjack" } }

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Tue Sep 01, 2015 5:14 am

EmaRsk,
Thanks for taking this on with me! So, I was on an old box that I had configured eons ago and just hobbled it along over at least 5 years through various changes and didnt seem to have a problem with alsa historically. I must have had pulse installed for a long time and just didnt realize it (pretty sure it was skype which had forced me into it some time in the past) because I always had an environment where all apps played simultaneously with no real effort.

Never messed with dmix, and I wouldnt mind trying it, but I dont even know if I know what that is let alone how to configure it.

Anyway, I would love to be using JACK if possible since the reason I have finally upgraded and migrated to this new box is to get things like hw synths and midi functioning but between all the advances in all areas of linux combined with the new hw is posing quite the challenge; i missed out on many of these improvements since I was a one box pony for so long.

All this is to say, that I have no idea how to configure this box for JACK. I tried your off the shelf conf file and nothing changed, although I had seen one very similar to it in another post regarind getting flash working and it too didnt work. When I do start qjackctl, I do get this cluster after jack starts:

....
JACK compiled with System V SHM support.
loading driver ..
apparent rate = 44100
creating alsa driver ... hw:Generic,1|hw:Generic,0|128|3|44100|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
ALSA lib /var/tmp/portage/media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.29/work/alsa-lib-1.0.29/src/conf.c:4590:(parse_args) Unknown parameter 1
ALSA lib /var/tmp/portage/media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.29/work/alsa-lib-1.0.29/src/conf.c:4723:(snd_config_expand) Parse arguments error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib /var/tmp/portage/media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.29/work/alsa-lib-1.0.29/src/control/control.c:954:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL hw:Generic,1
control open "hw:Generic,1" (No such file or directory)
configuring for 44100Hz, period = 128 frames (2.9 ms), buffer = 3 periods
ALSA: final selected sample format for capture: 32bit integer little-endian
ALSA: use 3 periods for capture
ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 32bit integer little-endian
ALSA: use 3 periods for playback
02:19:21.938 JACK connection change.
.........

Despite this, I do have working sound via alsa. I did re-emerge alsa-plugins with jack USE flag (not sure if I had done that before) and was hoping that was the missing piece, but it doesnt appear to have done it. Not sure where to go with any of this. I would LOVE to not be using pulse.... LOVE to have a working JACK... and love to be worrying about some other configuration issue on my damn box! If you are willing to triage further, much appreciated!

EmaRsk · Post by **EmaRsk** » Wed Sep 02, 2015 8:35 am

Hmm, "hw:Generic" doesn't sound right. Go into the setup and select the correct interface from the list.
As a start, you'll probably want to select a bigger buffer than "128", to avoid xruns. Also, if it complains about realtime permissions, you can uncheck "realtime" for now.
Oh, and you'll need to kill or suspend Pulseaudio before starting Jack. There's a guide here on how to use them together, but you can deal with that later.

Please note that my ~/.asoundrc assumes that jackd is always running (it is on my PC).

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Wed Sep 02, 2015 9:26 am

Yikes!
This is confusing. Please note that pulse is NOT installed on this system currently. I currently have skype installed with apulse only.

I was just fiddling with all the possible options for input/output in the jack setup. These are the only options:

Input Device: hw:HDMI (HD ATI HDMI hw:0), hw:Generic (HD-Audio hw:1), hw:Generic,0 (AC887-VD Analog hw:1,0), hw:Generic,1 (AC887-VD Alt Analog hw:1,2)
Output Device: hw:HDMI (HD ATI HDMI hw:0), hw:HDMI,3 (HDMI 0 hw:0,3), hw:Generic (HD-Audio hw:1), hw:Generic,0 (AC887-VD Analog hw:1,0), hw:Generic,1 (AC887-VD Alt Analog hw:1,2)

I really do not understand which to choose. If I choose the same one for input and output, the server starts with no errors but then I get no sound, all apps say that the device or resource busy. If I choose any analog option (hw1:x) but different ones for input/ouput, the server starts with the error shown above but I get sound (presumably through ALSA only).

I just do not understand this configuration. I really want to get jack working but I just do not understand now it even works, i guess. I will have to give up and see if pulse works, which I havent tried yet with the sound card but I hope it works. If it doesnt, I will be back. I am just completely confused by the way sound works on motherboards these days. I used to not have to worry about it before, ALSA just worked for me....[/quote]

EmaRsk · Post by **EmaRsk** » Wed Sep 02, 2015 11:30 am

Don't give up, if you want to work with MIDI and synths, Jack is pretty much mandatory

OK, so you you don't have Pulseaudio, one problem less to deal with.

It's funny that your soundcard is listed as "Generic", but that seems correct after all. I see that you have two analog sub-devices, I never dealt with such cases to be honest.

You say that if you select the same device for in/out, jack starts. Let's try one step at a time:

clean your ~/.asoundrc from my code, let's start with just the /etc/asound.conf you posted before
please, tell me if this works and post the output:
Code: Select all
```
jackd -dalsa -dhw:1
```
do you have mpv or mplayer installed?

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Wed Sep 02, 2015 3:08 pm

Arrrgh, So I realize that I added your code to /etc/asound.conf not the ~/.asoundrc but I went ahead and tried that real quick and still no change altho if I select the same input/output in jack the readable/writable system clients disappear (still the ALSA lib error message listed above) but sound (still one app at a time and no flash).

Anyhoo, so I cleared out ~/.asoundrc which I guess then defaults to /etc/asound.conf and run the command I get this:

jackd 0.121.3
Copyright 2001-2009 Paul Davis, Stephane Letz, Jack O'Quinn, Torben Hohn and others.
jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details

JACK compiled with System V SHM support.
loading driver ..
creating alsa driver ... hw:1|hw:1|1024|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
control device hw:1
configuring for 48000Hz, period = 1024 frames (21.3 ms), buffer = 2 periods
ALSA: final selected sample format for capture: 32bit integer little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for capture
ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 32bit integer little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for playback
jack main caught signal 2

No mpv/mplayer (which I guess is an indicator of gstreamer?)

EmaRsk · Post by **EmaRsk** » Wed Sep 02, 2015 4:28 pm

phobos13013 wrote:Arrrgh, So I realize that I added your code to /etc/asound.conf not the ~/.asoundrc

It should be the same, actually. I have no /etc/asound.conf and use ~/.asoundrc instead but it should be just a matter of preference. Just take care to have only one "pcm.!default" and one "ctl.!default" at a time in each file or you'll have a conflict (and I don't know if the first wins or the last wins). Of course, ~/.asoundrc overrides /etc/asound.conf.

jackd 0.121.3
Copyright 2001-2009 Paul Davis, Stephane Letz, Jack O'Quinn, Torben Hohn and others.
jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details

JACK compiled with System V SHM support.
loading driver ..
creating alsa driver ... hw:1|hw:1|1024|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
control device hw:1
configuring for 48000Hz, period = 1024 frames (21.3 ms), buffer = 2 periods
ALSA: final selected sample format for capture: 32bit integer little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for capture
ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 32bit integer little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for playback
jack main caught signal 2

OK, so jackd is starting.

No mpv/mplayer (which I guess is an indicator of gstreamer?)

I asked because I usually use mpv (very similar to mplayer), which has a command line options to select the audio output driver (alsa or jack).
We can use aplay instead, let's try this sequence:

make sure that you have only your original /etc/asound.conf you posted before, without the jackplug stuff.
with jackd NOT running, use aplay to play a wav file. It should work, right?
start jackd as before, and leave it running ("caught signal 2" means that you killed it with ctrl-c or whatever. If you didn't, then there's something wrong)
use aplay again. It should fail with a "Device or resource busy" error, right?
put my ~/.asoundrc back in place
use aplay again. Now it should work, if it doesn't, please post the output here.

If aplay works but you still can't hear a sound, then it's just a matter of selecting the right (sub-)device when starting jackd.

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Thu Sep 03, 2015 2:58 am

Back again! Thanks SO much for helping me with this. I am more of a dialectical problem-solver than I am a solitary one.

OK, so heres what happened:

-Yup, all asound* files are clear
-Well here we have the first problem; no play does not work! I basically get the exact same problem listed here... but it seems the solution has already been implemented (also I am not concerned with HDMI audio ATM!) https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=185675
-So I didnt even get this far with the above issue; however, note I DID NOT activate the jackd kill.... I didnt realize that is what it was suggesting! (Also note though that when I run jack through qjackctl, I do not get that result. The server continues with no fails except for in all the instances already mentioned)
-Here down havent even gotten that far.

So is there a hw alsa issue? I am certain there is a well documented completely obvious solution to this but I am still peering deep into this fog to figure it out, THANKS AGAIN for your patience!

EmaRsk · Post by **EmaRsk** » Thu Sep 03, 2015 7:05 am

Well, if aplay fails, then there's something blocking the device, or /etc/asound.conf isn't configured correctly.
How does it fail? What's its output?

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Fri Sep 04, 2015 4:33 am

Like I say, aplay fails with the same commands as the link I provided...

First, aplay complains:

aplay: set_params Sample format non available
Available formats:
- S16_LE
- S32_LE

And if I provide a sample format (either one), I get:

aplay: Channels count not available

But the thing is... If I play sound through an application, I get sound, just only one application can access the device (an no flash from in a browser...)

EmaRsk · Post by **EmaRsk** » Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:52 am

aplay: set_params Sample format non available
Available formats:
- S16_LE
- S32_LE

Ah, but that's not a device error. It looks like it doesn't like the file you're feeding it, try with another wav file. Or if you have sox installed, you can use the play command, which works with a wide range of formats.

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Mon Sep 07, 2015 5:35 pm

EmaRsk,
So I try it on all the other files I can find and for the ones that pick out the right sampling rate, I get:

aplay: Channels count not available

EmaRsk · Post by **EmaRsk** » Mon Sep 07, 2015 5:46 pm

Are you using wav files? Did you try sox's "play" command? What player do you have installed? mplayer? mpv? xine? vlc?
You got to have something that works, otherwise we're not going to get even started.

phobos13013 · Post by **phobos13013** » Mon Sep 07, 2015 7:19 pm

Well... I am playing mp3s, not wav. And the thing is, even though aplay isnt outputting properly, I can then use my mp3 manager to play something (I am using clementine for audio, vlc for video) without any problem, just one at a time.