Sound has disappeared. (Resolved with reservations)

[wayne1932]

Problems with sound with KDE4.4

Two or three months ago, sound would fail, but a reboot would fix it.  

Then it failed about two weeks ago, and the first or second reboot would not fix
it.  

Now my sound is completely gone (no notifications, no music players, etc) and
many reboots have not helped.

My sound card is good.  My sound card is a Creative soundblaster!Live  which uses the
snd_emu10k1 driver. I can boot into WinXP, and into PCLOS 3.5 and have sound, so
it must be related to 4.4.  I have sound using the 2010.7 livecd. I have not tried to upgrade to 4.5 yet simply
because too many people are reporting problems. Upgrading may fix the problem or
it might just put another layer to the whole situation.

I have done the PCC>Sound configuration, it looks just like it does when I boot
into 3.5.

I have run alsaconf as root, and it did not help.

I have removed (via synaptic) all the programs I have installed that use sound
(including video editing), except for those that have used for a long time with
no problems in the past, such as audacious,audacity,Musescore, timidity.  And I
have rebooted after removing them.

I do not have pulse audio installed, tho there seems to be a lot of pulseaudio
stuff installed as reported by synaptic. Up until now pulse audio did not seem to
be anything that I needed. Jack is still installed, trying to remove it tried to remove a lot of stuff.
 
I have installed task-LXDE, and don't have sound there either.

I have created a different user and don't have sound there.  I have also logged in as root with no sound.

I've tried everything I know how to do. (Yes I've looked at the mixer settings)  I'm looking for suggestions. I believe there must be a configuration file that somehow got glitched.  

[uncleV]

Mind installing "pulseaudio"?

After you install it from Synaptic go please to PCC-->Hardware-->Sound Configuration - mark "Enable PulseAudio". Reboot.

After that, if no success, go again PCC-->Hardware-->Sound Configuration - mark "Enable PulseAudio". Reboot to turn back your audio configuration.
Look at my signature too

[wayne1932]

OK Solved for now.  I did a complete upgrade and sound is back. 

My thought:  While the 4.5 version was in  transition, I must have installed something from the newer files that wasn't compatible with the 4.4 stuff I had. 

So hold that thought.      So far I haven't seen anything weird that is occurring because of the upgrade.   Maybe all the bugs being reported have either been fixed or occur in programs I don't use.

[wayne1932]

After the complete upgrade, and reboot, I opened audacious, and then JUK and played some of my music.

Everything was OK until a while later sound was gone again. Completely, not a peep out of anything.  Rebooted this morning still nada, zip, zilch.  So I proceeded to reinstall everything having to do with sound, rebooted, still nada, zip, zilch. 

Tried my livecd and sound is good there. So something is broke in the 4.5 system.  What else can I configure, reinstall, remove or what. 

Pulseaudio had a bad reputation at first, and I don't think it is used in the livecd, so I don't think it would help to install it.

[wayne1932]

Just got into the control panel, started and stopped alsa.  Message says sound is being used by pid 3040..3134 with FAILED appended.  Used top and didn't find this pid  showing, so I couldn't kill it.

What's next Sherlock?

[uncleV]

Things going much complex; let's think it both general and individual.

There windows-people miss something...

I'll post a thread generally about this -  named "Homo?"

[djohnston]

Try kill -9 3134 as root.

[uncleV]

[uncleV@localhost ~]$ su
Password:
[root@localhost uncleV]# kill -9 3134
bash: kill: (3134) - No such process
[root@localhost uncleV] exit
[uncleV@localhost ~]$

 

[djohnston]

unclev,

My reply was meant for wayne1932. He says "Message says sound is being used by pid 3040..3134 with FAILED appended."

[uncleV]

I know.

Just messing-joking
please excuse my joy with this

[wayne1932]

kill -9 ####
worked to kill, but I had to go back to the PCC> to find which process it was.  this time it was 9###.  I would stop ALSA and get a warning about a PID, then I would go kill it.  After ALSA was thoroughly dead, I restarted ALSA and now it works.  

Will this survive a reboot?   Will it happen again?    What caused it in the first place?  Only time will tell.

Thanks

[djohnston]

It would really help to know what the process name was. Does top show anything for process #3040?

[wayne1932]

Just rebooted sound didn't survive.  I went thru the kill exercise again and now have sound.  I don't have time right now to do more exploration.  I'll do more tonight.

The PID # seems to vary, It started out as 3###, last time it was 9### and this time it was back at 3###.  I've tried audacity, juk, audacious, timidity and they all play correctly and show up in top and then disappear as they should. The PID # appears to be just a random 4 digit number with me as user.  All the root PIDs seem to be a 3 digit #.

Off to what I need to get done, so I'll shut the machine down, and see what happens when I reboot.  Wonder if something about the sounds at startup or shut down causes it to hang.  I don't remember the startup sounds when I rebooted.

Thanks

[wayne1932]

More information

Startup doesn't have sound.  But I remember sound on shutdown.

Immediately after bootup, top doesn't report anything that looks like sound,  kwin X plasmadesktop mysqld netapplet (all 4digit PID) .  And a bunch of root processes that don't refer to sound either--all 1 2 or 3digit PIDs.  Shown below.  Interesting   "top>/home/wayne/Desktop/topout.txt"  file has garbage characters not shown in terminal display.


Going into PCC>Services.  Stopping ALSA says FAILED---alsa in use by 3113, 3183.  None of these PIDs appear in top.

Start/Stop sound in PCC>Services has no effect.

kill -9 these and start alsa brings back sound--I can hear popping the speaker.  Start brings up  
WARNING:  Module snd_mixer-oss already in kernel emu10k1 emu10k. [ OK ]
along alsactl storing volumes, and restoring volumes, just before the warning message.  Probably stop does the store and start restores.  I can run "kill" without going to root, because they belong to user not root.

So somewhere a couple of PIDS for alsa are being generated for the user and then hidden from top.  But they block use by other programs.  

Root PIDS:
(B    1 root       1   0  1796  568  496 S    0  0.0   0:00.84 init                                      (B
(B    2 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd                                  (B
(B    3 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0                               (B
(B    4 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 ksoftirqd/1                               (B
(B    5 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 events/0                                  (B
(B    6 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.01 events/1                                  (B
(B    7 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 khelper                                   (B
(B    8 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 netns                                     (B
(B    9 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 async/mgr                                 (B
(B   10 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 pm                                        (B
(B   11 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 sync_supers                               (B
(B   12 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 bdi-default                               (B
(B   13 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kintegrityd/0                             (B
(B   14 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kintegrityd/1                             (B
(B   15 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kblockd/0                                 (B
(B   16 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kblockd/1                                 (B
(B   17 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpid                                    (B
(B   18 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpi_notify                              (B
(B   19 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpi_hotplug                             (B
(B   20 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kseriod                                   (B
(B   23 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kswapd0                                   (B
(B   24 root       1   5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 ksmd                                      (B
(B   25 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 aio/0                                     (B
(B   26 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 aio/1                                     (B
(B   27 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 jfsIO                                     (B
(B   28 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 jfsCommit                                 (B
(B   29 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 jfsCommit                                 (B
(B   30 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 jfsSync                                   (B
(B   31 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 crypto/0                                  (B
(B   32 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 crypto/1                                  (B
(B   35 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kpsmoused                                 (B
(B   51 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 ata/0                                     (B
(B   52 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 ata/1                                     (B
(B   53 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 ata_aux                                   (B
(B   55 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 scsi_eh_0                                 (B
(B   56 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 scsi_eh_1                                 (B
(B   57 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 scsi_eh_2                                 (B
(B   58 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 scsi_eh_3                                 (B
(B   66 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 scsi_eh_4                                 (B
(B   67 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 scsi_eh_5                                 (B
(B   70 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 jbd2/sdb5-8                               (B
(B   71 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 ext4-dio-unwrit                           (B
(B   72 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 ext4-dio-unwrit                           (B
(B   77 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 flush-8:16                                (B
(B  159 root       1  -4  2292 1008  424 S    0  0.0   0:00.04 udevd                                     (B
(B  407 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kstriped                                  (B
(B  410 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 ksuspend_usbd                             (B
(B  411 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 khubd                                     (B
(B  418 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 khpsbpkt                                  (B
(B  425 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kconservative/0                           (B
(B  426 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kconservative/1                           (B
(B  427 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kondemand/0                               (B
(B  428 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kondemand/1                               (B
(B  443 root       1   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 scsi_eh_6                                 (B(Btop - 16:29:26 up 7 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.21, 0.06, 0.02(B

[djohnston]

wayne,

Let's see if avahi-daemon is running. Go to PCC > System > System services. See if avahi is set to start at bootup. If it is, press the Stop button on the right, then uncheck the "Start at boot" box. Reboot, and see if that makes a difference.

If it makes no difference, go to the control panel to start/stop alsa and see if you get the "sound is being used by pid 3040..3134 with FAILED appended." message again. If so, open a terminal, and do ps -Al  | less
("ps", SPACE, dash, Capital A, lowercase L, SPACE, vertical bar, SPACE, "less")

Whatever process numbers you're seeing should show up there. Need to know what the process names are.