Firstly, I'm using Xubuntu-core 16.04 and working on audio with Bitwig Studio. For hardware, I have an old Hoontech DSP24 eight channel audio interface. It's great and working fine. Or was. The card is referred to as an 'ICE1712' device or 'DSP24'. The first time I used the Hoontech on the Xubuntu box, it 'just worked'. No diddling around necessary. Ditto with Jack. First time I launched it, it just worked; saw the Hoontech and all its ports (has MIDI ports, too). Until about [s]three[/s] five days ago.
Some background. I have been using QJackctl to start and use jack. Everything was working beautifully. Working late one night on something, closed down the computer with droopy eyes, get up inspired the next day to continue work, boot up and Jack and ALSA are no longer talking to each other. Haven't been able to play a note or creat anything since.
Thing is, I didn't fiddle or tweak any file prior to this happening. Everything was working perfectly so no need. Wasn't digging around in code or changing files. Was just sitting there working and then closed down, switched the machine off, switched it back on the next day, chaos.
The only thing I can think of at this point is that when I closed down, I left something open and that, in turn, has left something hanging and I can't find what. I was playing with Ardour that night as never dug around much there and had it and Bitwig open at the same time at one point.
Is it possible that I have stopped jack and quit QJackctl while Ardour, or something else, was still open and this has broken something? I was also playing around with Audacity for a bit with both Ardour and Bitwig open at one stage. I definitely stopped and started QJackctl a number of time during the session with Ardour open (Bitwig is very robust and solid and is not effected by that, don't know about Ardour or Audacity).
I was also playing around with Drumgizmo that night (which I couldn't get to work) and I downloaded and fiddled with Pianoteq (brilliant), just in case that sets alarm bells ringing for someone re. Jack conflicts/anomalies/issues.
To what actually happens. When I launch QJackctl, this is what I get in the 'Messages' window.
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00:50:43.659 Logging started --- Mon Feb 18 00:50:43 2019 ---
00:50:43.695 Statistics reset.
00:50:43.702 ALSA connection change.
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
00:50:43.741 ALSA connection graph change.
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00:52:17.784 /usr/bin/jackd -dalsa -r48000 -p256 -n2 -D -Chw:DSP24 -Phw:DSP24,2
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
Unknown driver "alsa"
jackdmp 1.9.11
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
Copyright 2004-2014 Grame.
jackdmp 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
00:52:18.007 JACK was started with PID=6658.
00:52:18.013 JACK was stopped
00:52:20.020 Could not connect to JACK server as client. - Overall operation failed. - Unable to connect to server. Please check the messages window for more info.
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
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Unknown driver "alsa"
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jack_control start
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01:04:37.897 JACK connection change.
01:04:37.900 Client activated.
01:04:37.900 Patchbay deactivated.
01:04:38.113 JACK connection graph change.
The whole system has always used the Hoontech and QJackctl has always showed the audio interface's ports which ends up being eight audio ins and eight audio outs under 'Audio' and the MIDI ports under the 'MIDI' tab. I've never used internal audio for anything (it is switched off in the BIOS in fact). The only thing QJackctl can be seeing/using is the Hoontech 'consumer' audio card physically in the computer and its two channels.
Bit more detail on the Hoontech: there are three bits of hardware: the audio interface with its eight ins/outs/midi plugs into its own PCI card in the computer and attached to that PCI card is a regular little consumer type card (that sits in another PCI slot, but is not plugged into the computer, if you follow, but the bigger PCI audio card). I have never used the smaller consumer card, it is just there, but now it pops up out of nowhere!
I have a feeling this could be related to Jack not finding Alsa because Alsa seems to be seeing the DSP24 and all of its ins/outs/MIDI ports.
Any ideas, clues, fixes, magic, spells, voodoo that might get me over this hump would be very much appreciated. I will say that I have tried quite a lot of things, but have avoided doing anything major because I didn't do anything major prior to this happening. I would rather not use an elephant gun to kill a mosquito, if you know what I mean, and figure I can't be too far away from the fix as I haven't done anything to take me too far away from a working, stable setup.
So my question would be, how do I get QJackctl and ALSA playing nice again and get rid of that error message?
Another question would be how do I identify what is using my audio card, if anything, when I try to start jack? As simple as this question may appear, I can find no definitive answer to this online, as so many other things Linux audio. If I could identify for certain whether something else is using the card when and refusing to hand it over I try to start Jack , then I could proceed to figure out how to change that. Any help on that one?
I will add finally that, before all this, when I started jack the card was happily handed over, Pulse shut up and would produce no sound (via Firefox for instance, fine by me) and when I closed Qjackctl, ownership of audio went straight back to Pulse. All in order there, as it should be, perfect. Oh, for the good old days!
All ideas welcome.