Arch Linux

odp

Member

Registered: 2012-04-26

Posts: 136

unknown sound issues - how to debug?

Hi,

I've been trying to setup audio streaming over network using pulseaudio.
Today, when I sat down by my rig and played some tunes, the audio stopped and the gnome sound applet dissapeared. I rebooted and the applet dissapeared after a few minutes while sound kept playing.

I now have sound playing but I am unable to control the volume from gnome or from multimedia keys on my keyboard only from alsamixer through terminal.

I believe I installed pulsaudio(might have been reinstalled but unsure), I installed Rsound and Esound (the two later i'm not able to remove with pacman)

I would really like to know how to debug this, ie. what log files to look in and what to look for?

Hope someone can push me in the right directing

Last edited by odp (2013-08-19 20:31:16)

ooo

Member

Registered: 2013-04-10

Posts: 1,638

Re: unknown sound issues - how to debug?

first of all, you definately don't need esound.

afaik gnome uses pulseaudio at least by default. from my experience with gnome I can tell that if pulseaudio crashes gnomes volume control applet will just disappear etc. so I'm suspecting you've broke it somehow.

i know nothing about rsound, but if you have it running it could block pulseaudio from starting (same thing with esound).

odp

Member

Registered: 2012-04-26

Posts: 136

Re: unknown sound issues - how to debug?

Rsound is an old sound daemon developed by one of the arch community members. It provides a simple audio interface for streaming audio over tcp/ip - but its old and did not work well for me. Thus I have now removed it. After I removed it I dont experience the applet disappearing any more (even though it was not running) but the symptoms of not being able to control the sound from within gnome is still apparent. The only esound related I can find is esdcompat which might have to be there - again I could be wrong.

So im still looking around for way to find the logged events and what not to debug this annoyance

odp

Member

Registered: 2012-04-26

Posts: 136

Re: unknown sound issues - how to debug?

update:

I found out how to log pulseaudio events but I really have no idea what to look for?

derhamster

Member

Registered: 2012-07-08

Posts: 86

Re: unknown sound issues - how to debug?

Post those logs after a crash occurred. Someone who is familiar with pulse might spot the problem. Also mention where those logs came from (journal, some log file).

I have a similar setup, where I sometimes stream music to a different computer in my network with pulse. Most often I control this through pasystray. To control volumes I use pavucotrol. It might be worth trying those tools. You can also try controlling everything pulseaudio related through pactl.

odp

Member

Registered: 2012-04-26

Posts: 136

Re: unknown sound issues - how to debug?

The logging of events happens when you start pulseaudio in -vvvv  and let it run so waiting for a crash to occure could take ss/mm/hh and the log grows very very fast. The crash might not happen when im listening to sound. So I need some way to only log critical events.

odp

Member

Registered: 2012-04-26

Posts: 136

Re: unknown sound issues - how to debug?

Post those logs after a crash occurred. Someone who is familiar with pulse might spot the problem. Also mention where those logs came from (journal, some log file).

I have a similar setup, where I sometimes stream music to a different computer in my network with pulse. Most often I control this through pasystray. To control volumes I use pavucotrol. It might be worth trying those tools. You can also try controlling everything pulseaudio related through pactl.

Can you tell me more about this setup you have? How you setup and configured it etc?

I have disabled the simultaneous output and for now it seems that the problem is gone. I have previously had problems with my hdmi audio under windows where it would try to request on the same IRQ. Don't know if this might be the problem again.