Arch Linux

Sekre

Member

From: The Rainy North

Registered: 2006-11-24

Posts: 116

alsa randomly "dies"

Hello fellow archers !

I've had a problem for a few days now that is kind annoying.
Every now and then (random time interval) alsa output stops working, can't really find the source of the problem. First I thought it might be a bug in mpd since I almost always have it running. But this don't seem to be the problem but I'm out of ideas on how to fix this.

Problem :  No alsa output yet oss works perfectly.
                Symptom appears seemingly random.
                Symptoms dissapears after a reboot, but not with rmmod/modprobe.

mpd, mplayer and aplay gives no errors. Although mpd-svn (from aur) gives me this upon starting after alsa "died"

# mpd
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:3510:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3510:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3510:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such device
ALSA lib conf.c:3982:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such device
ALSA lib pcm.c:2145:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default

lspci

 # lspci | grep Audio
7:00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)

Would really appreciate any help, since it is pretty annoying having to restart my computer randomly

Sekre

Member

From: The Rainy North

Registered: 2006-11-24

Posts: 116

Re: alsa randomly "dies"

Ok, so to update.

I have now had a restart of my computer and as expected, alsa now works for mplayer however not for mpd which still gives the same error as before. And aplay is ouputting static, maybe can't handle mp3...anyhow it outputs noise at least which is more than yesterday

This is an area I have no real knowledge about but if I can see PCM in alsamixer, shouldn't mpd also be able to find it?

jacko

Member

Registered: 2007-11-23

Posts: 840

Re: alsa randomly "dies"

is this on-board sound? Honestly intermittent problems usually are a direct result of hardware failure. You could always try re-seating the card if its possible.

You can always look at updating the firmware if its on-board. As alsa advances so should the firmware of the hardware using its drivers.

Last edited by jacko (2007-12-01 13:45:30)

Sekre

Member

From: The Rainy North

Registered: 2006-11-24

Posts: 116

Re: alsa randomly "dies"

Sorry I have not responded in a while, been terribly busy lately.

jacko : yes this is an on-board card actually. Tried to check for newer firmware than I already got but no luck.

Anyway I might have "solved" the whole thing. Or rather I have not yet experienced any more problems with it. Really strange actally. Had the problem at least twice a day for 'bout a week and then it's gone

Been eyeing pacman like a hawk for any package updates that might have anything to do with it but I couldn't find any so it might have been mpd acting up. Tried uninstalling mpd-svn again, cleaned all configs for mpd and temp files and installed mpd again, wrote new config (same as before actually) and still works, have not been able to fully test it though.