trying to debug pulseaudio problem

[anko]

hi, for some reason pulseaudio has suddenly stopped starting / working properly on login to my ubustudio + kxstudio system, so the xfce mixer and anything using pulse for sound isn't working anymore... any tips on how to troubleshoot this?

[anko]

/me answers meself, ok it appears to be related to my audio interfaces somehow 're-ordering' themselves so that jack was no longer using the correct alsa device... i think i have things working again now.

[anko]

for those interested in how i configured my audio devices to come up with persitent ordering on a debian/ubuntu/mint style system, i followed the steps in this faq:

http://wiki.linuxaudio.org/faq/start

specifically this part:

---- begin paste ----
Q: How to order the numbering of soundcards, if using ALSA drivers?

In /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf (debian based distro) one can give an option line as:

options [sound-driver-name] index=[number]

When a driver handles more than one device, you have to specify multiple values for the index option, like this:

options snd-usb-audio index=2,3

How do I specify order of *several* USB soundcards in alsa-base.conf?

If you have several soundcards of one type (=the same driver), you can additionally specify product-ids, as follows:

Look at the output of “lsusb” and “lsusb -n” for the vendor/product IDs of the devices, then specify these IDs in the vid and/or pid options, in hexadecimal. For exampe, if your first USB device has IDs 0123:4567 and the second 89ab:cdef, use the line

options snd-usb-audio index=2,3 pid=0x4567,0xcdef
---- end paste---

now i get all my audio devices, including sound cards and external usb devices like usb midi controllers to come up in a set order on every boot or reboot.

[GraysonPeddie]

That's great to know about reordering USB devices (MIDI keyboard and sound card). Thanks.

And speaking of ALSA, is there a way to disable HDMI audio? The BIOS in my HP Pavilion dv7-6168nr does not have an option for disabling HDMI Audio and it will always stay in the first slot of hw0 or hw1 depending in whether the USB comes first or not. My laptop has an IDT HD Audio chip.

[anko]

That's great to know about reordering USB devices (MIDI keyboard and sound card). Thanks.

And speaking of ALSA, is there a way to disable HDMI audio? The BIOS in my HP Pavilion dv7-6168nr does not have an option for disabling HDMI Audio and it will always stay in the first slot of hw0 or hw1 depending in whether the USB comes first or not. My laptop has an IDT HD Audio chip.

hi grayson, yep, you can blacklist the kernel module and the useless hdmi interface will dissapear (i got rid of it myself). you can add a line to one of the blacklist* files in /etc/modprobe.d, but i just put all my custom sound config at the bottom of the same alsa-base.conf file mentionned in the faq i linked to above.

if you do an lsmod at the command line you should be able to work out which module is providing the hdmi audio support. in my case it was snd-hda-codec-hdmi, so i added the following to the bottom of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf (the first line is just a comment so i remeber what the line is for):

# blacklist the hdmi driver - unused and unwanted
blacklist snd-hda-codec-hdmi

the above will make the kernel module that supports hdmi audio on my machine simply not load at all, so no more redundant hdmi audio stuff among my interfaces.

in my case i also had an onboard intel sound chip which i never use for pro audio, so i disabled it in my bios setup but the kernel drivers would still load, so i used the same trick to blacklist that module too.

hope that helps.

[GraysonPeddie]

But the problem is, disabling snd-hda-intel is just like disabling usb-audio. If you have Akai MPK25 and Creative Labs Sound Blaster USB 5.1, you will not have both of them if you disable usb-audio. In other words, HDMI Audio and my sound card (with 2 headphone jacks and a microphone) will be disabled.

But with Windows 7, here's what mine looks like:



I'm going to start a new thread to make a feature request to see if it's possible to disable a sound card or HDMI Audio through Cadence (but with root access for blacklisting it) either via a module, a module with a USB ID, or a module with a PCI ID. But with Windows, you don't need administrator access to disable/enable sound cards/HDMI Audio.

[falkTX]

The new Cadence update (in the works) will use name-based devices (instead of using indexes), so the device will remain across reboots - that should solve this.

[anko]

But the problem is, disabling snd-hda-intel is just like disabling usb-audio. If you ...

i wasn't suggesting you blacklist yr sound device... the line i metion above will disable the useless hdmi outputs only, not anything else.

why would you be trying to disable snd-hda-intel if that's a sound device you actually use... ?

[GraysonPeddie]

Code: Select all

grayson@grayson-laptop:~$ grep -E " 16:| 53:" /proc/interrupts & cat /proc/asound/cards
[1] 2566
 0 [Generic        ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
                      HD-Audio Generic at 0xf0344000 irq 53
 1 [Loopback       ]: Loopback - Loopback
                      Loopback 1
 2 [Generic_1      ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
                      HD-Audio Generic at 0xf0340000 irq 16
 16:     106982       6693          0        398   IO-APIC-fasteoi   snd_hda_intel
 53:          0          0          0         78   PCI-MSI-edge      snd_hda_intel
grayson@grayson-laptop:~$

IRQ 53 is associated with HDMI Audio (hw:0) and IRQ 16 is associated with STAC92xx Analog (hw:2). So disabling snd_hda_intel will not only disable HDMI Audio, it will also disable STAC92xx Analog, which I really need.

[Pablo]

Try unbinding the hdmi device. See [1]. The example there is for a USB device. I guess it should be easier for the hdmi. Look at /sys/bus/pci/drivers/hdmi (??), then echo the number of the hdmi device to "unbind" in the same directory.

[1] http://wiki.linuxmusicians.com/doku.php ... ng_devices

[anko]

IRQ 53 is associated with HDMI Audio (hw:0) and IRQ 16 is associated with STAC92xx Analog (hw:2). So disabling snd_hda_intel will not only disable HDMI Audio, it will also disable STAC92xx Analog, which I really need.

i'll try one last time: leave snd-hda-intel alone, don't touch snd-hda-intel, leave snd-hda-intel be...

what i suggested was:

blacklist snd-hda-codec-hdmi

blacklisting snd-hda-codec-hdmi will get rid of unwanted hdmi devices, it has nothing to do with snd-hda-intel. don't touch snd-hda-intel, forget snd-hda-intel. if you need that sound device _leave it alone_.... only blacklist snd-hda-codec-hdmi, that will only affect the unwanted/useless hdmi device...

hope that's clear.

[GraysonPeddie]

Ah, okay... I understand it now.

With all that stuff it's getting very complicated in the Linux world... Maybe the new version of Cadence will step us away from the command line world... It's so 1990s...

*shrug, frustrated*

And yes, I am an advanced Linux user as I have a lot of experience, even installing Arch (for my laptop) and Debian Sid (for my server) and configure both of them from scratch, but man, what can I say? I guess I can't have Linux and Windows both ways. *sigh*

Well, maybe the new version of Cadence will get me closer to feeling like I'm running Windows due to the fact that I rarely use the Windows command prompt, like doing away with indexes so that users don't have to touch /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf.

I apologize if I'm being so hard in myself, even to falkTX in my feature request thread.