Lots and lots of JACK problems!

[DWW256]

Hello all! I've been trying out the Geekos DAW project on openSUSE, but I'm running into problems left and right! Can anyone help?

First off, I can't stop PulseAudio. I've set autospawn = no in both ~/.pulse/client.conf and /etc/pulse/client.conf, but PulseAudio continues to restart immediately after I run pulseaudio --kill. After restarting, PulseAudio doesn't display all of my devices—just one HDMI out which I never use. Weird, right?

Second, I can't start JACK consistently. Yesterday I was running into different problems where JACK kept falling back to a capture-only connection to ALSA and then quitting, which I managed to solve in the terminal, but not in QJackCtl, by changing the input and output devices. I could also get JACK to start in Cadence yesterday, oddly enough, but today Cadence won't open at all. Back when Cadence would start, the options to start the A2JMidi bridge and the Jack/PulseAudio bridges were grayed out, despite the fact that I have the a2jmidid and pulseaudio-module-jack packages installed.

Any help fixing my desperately broken system would be immensely appreciated.

Here's the traceback from a failed Cadence launch:

Code: Select all

Using Tray Engine 'Qt'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/cadence/src/cadence.py", line 2372, in <module>
    gui = CadenceMainW()
  File "/usr/share/cadence/src/cadence.py", line 1200, in __init__
    self.DBusReconnect()
  File "/usr/share/cadence/src/cadence.py", line 1237, in DBusReconnect
    self.jackStarted()
  File "/usr/share/cadence/src/cadence.py", line 1344, in jackStarted
    gDBus.a2j.start()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/dbus/proxies.py", line 145, in __call__
    **keywords)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/dbus/connection.py", line 651, in call_blocking
    message, timeout)
dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.gna.home.a2jmidid.error.generic: a2j_start() failed.

And here's what QJackCtl recorded in the messages when I tried to start JACK from there.

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13:24:58.635 Statistics reset.
13:24:58.638 ALSA connection change.
Cannot read socket fd = 21 err = Success
CheckRes error
Could not read result type = 22
Client name = qjackctl conflits with another running client
Cannot connect to the server
JackShmReadWritePtr1::~JackShmReadWritePtr1 - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
13:24:58.935 ALSA connection graph change.
13:26:17.950 JACK is starting...
13:26:17.951 /usr/bin/jackd -dalsa -r48000 -p256 -n2 -Xseq -D -Chw:Generic_1,0 -Phw:Generic_1,0
Cannot read socket fd = 21 err = Success
CheckRes error
Could not read result type = 22
Client name = qjackctl conflits with another running client
Cannot connect to the server
JackShmReadWritePtr1::~JackShmReadWritePtr1 - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
13:26:17.967 JACK was started with PID=28383.
no message buffer overruns
no message buffer overruns
no message buffer overruns
`default' server already active
Failed to open server
jackdmp 1.9.14
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
Copyright 2004-2016 Grame.
Copyright 2016-2019 Filipe Coelho.
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
13:26:17.998 JACK was stopped
13:26:20.016 Could not connect to JACK server as client. - Overall operation failed. - Server communication error. Please check the messages window for more info.
Cannot read socket fd = 21 err = Success
CheckRes error
Could not read result type = 22
Client name = qjackctl conflits with another running client
Cannot connect to the server
JackShmReadWritePtr1::~JackShmReadWritePtr1 - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock

Thank you all so very much!

[merlyn]

Cadence's settings can get messed up and it becomes unstartable. Use this to reset Cadence :

Code: Select all

$ cadence-session-start --reset

[DWW256]

Thank you for that! I got Cadence to work again after another reboot, but I still can't get it to bridge to PulseAudio or ALSA MIDI. I tried running a2jmidid from the command line, but it just said:

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Bridge starting...
Using JACK server 'default'
Hardware ports will not be exported.
Cannot read socket fd = 4 err = Success
CheckRes error
Could not read result type = 22
Client name = a2j conflits with another running client
Cannot connect to the server
JackShmReadWritePtr1::~JackShmReadWritePtr1 - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock
ERROR: a2j_jack_client_create: Cannot create jack client
ERROR: a2j_start: a2j_new() failed.

[merlyn]

I have to admit that I don't have a clue about pulse audio . There are a few who do on this forum -- @bluebell and @nikgnomicradio spring to mind.

As for a2jmidid -- the relevant line is this :

Code: Select all

Client name = a2j conflits with another running client

That means a2jmidid is already running. Can you see your MIDI interface in Catia?

I would focus on what you want to do, like record MIDI from a MIDI keyboard and get that working, which may work even if a box is greyed out.

[DWW256]

I'm just noticing that it continues to say "ALSA MIDI Bridge is stopped" under the respective tab. I did figure out that if I uncheck "Start with JACK", it allows me to push the "Start" button, but it does nothing.

[merlyn]

Do you have a MIDI driver selected?

Go to Cadence > Configure > Driver > ALSA and select 'ALSA Sequencer'

[Basslint]

Hello, co-maintainer of GeekosDAW here, although you got the one who doesn't use Cadence

First, thanks for this report because it's the first time a GeekosDAW user tries avoiding Pulseaudio. We still are adjusting to all possible workflows and it's very important to have people doing things differently, so we can make things work more smoothly from the start.

For ALSA MIDI, are you using GeekosDAW from a fresh install or by keeping an existing home directory? If it's the second case, it's possible that you have a script which starts a2jmidid automatically.

As for the other issue, if you bear with us a little bit, we might have an answer.

[Kott]

Hi,

First off, I can't stop PulseAudio. I've set autospawn = no in both ~/.pulse/client.conf and /etc/pulse/client.conf, but PulseAudio continues to restart immediately after I run pulseaudio --kill. After restarting, PulseAudio doesn't display all of my devices—just one HDMI out which I never use. Weird, right?

Right. What is your distribution (Leap, TW) and version of pulseaudio?
~/.pulse/client.conf works for me in Tumbleweed

I still can't get it to bridge to PulseAudio

It requires pulseaudio-module-jack package installed

merlyn has good point about checking alsa midi driver in Cadence:

Do you have a MIDI driver selected?

Go to Cadence > Configure > Driver > ALSA and select 'ALSA Sequencer'

[Kott]

As was said check another running a2j bridges in process list.

How it should look:

[DWW256]

Thanks everyone for your responses! Problem's not been solved yet, but I hope we're getting closer. Always the last place you look.

Anyway.

@merlyn: I found some interesting things when I realized that Cadence was actually running JACK on a dummy driver. I changed it to ALSA, set the correct hardware for input/output, and set the MIDI driver to ALSA Sequencer. Now JACK won't always stop when I want it to, but I can now force restart it—and now it restarts PulseAudio when I do.

@Kott: I checked KSysGuard and actually did find a2jmidid in the running processes! I closed it and tried starting a2jmidid from the terminal again, but nothing changed.
Regarding PulseAudio weirdness, I think I solved that by configuring the sound cards in YaST. I'll let you all know if an issue crops up again. I did install pulseaudio-module-jack. Do I have to set autospawn = 0 if I want the bridge to work?

@Basslint: glad to hear from the project maintainer! I'm assuming you meant that I'm the first one who *doesn't* want to avoid PulseAudio? Either way, I am running from a clean install, home directory and all.
While I'm at it, I might as well mention to you that I also can't get my WiFi to work with kernel-rt for whatever reason. Might that require installing the kernel-rt-extra package?

[Basslint]

@Basslint: glad to hear from the project maintainer! I'm assuming you meant that I'm the first one who *doesn't* want to avoid PulseAudio? Either way, I am running from a clean install, home directory and all.
While I'm at it, I might as well mention to you that I also can't get my WiFi to work with kernel-rt for whatever reason. Might that require installing the kernel-rt-extra package?

Sorry, I misread your previous post, I thought you wanted more flexibility about when to activate PulseAudio.

I don't use Cadence (and I wouldn't recommend it if you have some basic JACK skills) but if you install the pulseaudio jack bridge, it should work even without setting off the autospawn.

As for the WiFi, that probably has to do with the (I assume) proprietary drivers, which could be in kernel-rt-extras (but I can't vouch for that, since I use the regular kernel, which is good enough for my setup).

Sorry for the inconveniences by the way and thanks for the feedback, we have actually patched our Cadence package to avoid this problem in the future! Right now the thing we need the most to improve is users like you

[Kott]

I did install pulseaudio-module-jack. Do I have to set autospawn = 0 if I want the bridge to work?

With autospawn=1 it will run unconditional and couldn't be controlled from Cadence AFAIK.

[DWW256]

I just checked and it is now at autospawn = 0. Updated Cadence and still no luck

[Basslint]

I just checked and it is now at autospawn = 0. Updated Cadence and still no luck

I actually can't replicate your problem on my system. Could you try running from the command line:

cadence-pulse2jack

and see if the proper connections are created?

[DWW256]

Output reads:

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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
Error: cannot connect to JACK, server is not running.
PulseAudio is already running, bridge it...
Failure: Module initialization failed
Failure: Module initialization failed
Done

At this point, I'm probably going to just switch over to Mint. openSUSE has given me more trouble than I think it's worth for now. I still hold out hope that someday, it may be stable and user-friendly enough for me to return. In the meantime, best of luck to the Geekos DAW team! Hopefully nobody else will run into my same issues, and all may be well once again.