[vox-tech] Intermittent Sound Issues under Fedora Core 2

Tue Feb 15 11:19:10 PST 2005

This issue falls under the "annoying quirks" category rather than
"mission critical failure"...

My desktop system at work is Fedora Core 2 with a 2.6.5-1.358 stock 
kernel, running KDE 3.2. Most of the time, it works great. I do my 
development work with xmms running so I can listen to music on my 
headphones and tune out the ambient noise in the office. 

However, at seemingly random intervals, always at the end of a song on
my xmms playlist, xmms stops playing and (ALSA? artsd?) generates this 
dialog:

	couldn't open audio
	Please check that
	your soundcard is configured properly
	you have the correct output plugin selected
	no sound program is blocking the soundcard

Sometimes there's an accompanyng alert tone, sometimes not. Xmms doesn't
crash... it just stops playing. When this happens, sometimes I
immediately try to click play again; other times I simply continue with
whatever I was doing until It's convenient to ctrl-tab over to xmms and
press play then. And, again, sometimes pressing play immediately starts
the music right up. But other times, the dialog re-asserts itself and I
get no joy.

Sometimes when this happens, I've selected a different xmms output
plugin, and other times I've just left it on ALSA. It seems to make no 
difference in the behavior. And *always*, if I wait long enough, xmms 
will allow me to continue listening. Sometimes after only one click of 
the play button, sometimes not for ten minutes. 

A quick search of Google Groups reveals nothing that seems to pertain;
RedHat's documentation doesn't cover this; I found a troubleshooting
script here:

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=aadebug

which doesn't seem to uncover anything out-of-the-ordinary (other than
not being able to find lsmod and lspci)...

*************************************************************************
ALSA Audio Debug v0.0.8 - Tue Feb 15 11:07:02 PST 2005
http://alsa.opensrc.org/?aadebug

Kernel ----------------------------------------------------
Linux mhall 2.6.5-1.358 #1 Sat May 8 09:04:50 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386
GNU/Linux

Loaded Modules --------------------------------------------
bin/./alsack.sh: line 10: lsmod: command not found

Modprobe Conf ---------------------------------------------
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
install snd-intel8x0 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-intel8x0 &&
/usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
remove snd-intel8x0 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; };
/sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0

Proc Asound -----------------------------------------------
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.4rc2 (Tue Mar 30
08:19:30 2004 UTC).
Compiled on May  8 2004 for kernel 2.6.5-1.358.
0 [I82801BAICH2   ]: ICH - Intel 82801BA-ICH2
                     Intel 82801BA-ICH2 at 0xd800, irq 10
  0: [0- 0]: ctl
 25: [0- 1]: digital audio capture
 16: [0- 0]: digital audio playback
 24: [0- 0]: digital audio capture
  1:       : sequencer
 33:       : timer
cat: /proc/asound/hwdep: No such file or directory
00-00: Intel ICH : Intel 82801BA-ICH2 : playback 1 : capture 1
00-01: Intel ICH - MIC ADC : Intel 82801BA-ICH2 - MIC ADC : capture 1

Dev Snd ---------------------------------------------------
controlC0  hwC2D0    midiC0D4  midiC2D0  midiC3D4  pcmC0D4c  pcmC1D2c
pcmC2D0c  pcmC2D6c  pcmC3D4c
controlC1  hwC2D1    midiC0D5  midiC2D1  midiC3D5  pcmC0D4p  pcmC1D2p
pcmC2D0p  pcmC2D6p  pcmC3D4p
controlC2  hwC2D2    midiC0D6  midiC2D2  midiC3D6  pcmC0D5c  pcmC1D3c
pcmC2D1c  pcmC2D7c  pcmC3D5c
controlC3  hwC2D3    midiC0D7  midiC2D3  midiC3D7  pcmC0D5p  pcmC1D3p
pcmC2D1p  pcmC2D7p  pcmC3D5p
hwC0D0     hwC3D0    midiC1D0  midiC2D4  pcmC0D0c  pcmC0D6c  pcmC1D4c
pcmC2D2c  pcmC3D0c  pcmC3D6c
hwC0D1     hwC3D1    midiC1D1  midiC2D5  pcmC0D0p  pcmC0D6p  pcmC1D4p
pcmC2D2p  pcmC3D0p  pcmC3D6p
hwC0D2     hwC3D2    midiC1D2  midiC2D6  pcmC0D1c  pcmC0D7c  pcmC1D5c
pcmC2D3c  pcmC3D1c  pcmC3D7c
hwC0D3     hwC3D3    midiC1D3  midiC2D7  pcmC0D1p  pcmC0D7p  pcmC1D5p
pcmC2D3p  pcmC3D1p  pcmC3D7p
hwC1D0     midiC0D0  midiC1D4  midiC3D0  pcmC0D2c  pcmC1D0c  pcmC1D6c
pcmC2D4c  pcmC3D2c  seq
hwC1D1     midiC0D1  midiC1D5  midiC3D1  pcmC0D2p  pcmC1D0p  pcmC1D6p
pcmC2D4p  pcmC3D2p  timer
hwC1D2     midiC0D2  midiC1D6  midiC3D2  pcmC0D3c  pcmC1D1c  pcmC1D7c
pcmC2D5c  pcmC3D3c
hwC1D3     midiC0D3  midiC1D7  midiC3D3  pcmC0D3p  pcmC1D1p  pcmC1D7p
pcmC2D5p  pcmC3D3p

CPU -------------------------------------------------------
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 1.50GHz
cpu MHz         : 1483.674

RAM -------------------------------------------------------
MemTotal:       516688 kB
SwapTotal:     1048816 kB

Hardware --------------------------------------------------
bin/./alsack.sh: line 50: lspci: command not found

*************************************************************************

I don't even know where to start looking for a solution...

--
Marc Elliot Hall
P.O. Box 435
Shingle Springs, CA 95682
www.hallmarc.net