pulseaudio causing crashing of applications

[Andrew Farris]

Rodd Clarkson wrote:
>> This sounds as if some other process blocked the audio device when
>> switching back the session so that PA was unable to reopen the device
>> and thus playback stays suspended.
>>
>> Could you please check this, by running "pactl" in a terminal when
>> this happens again, and then type "list-sinks"? If your sound card
>> sink remains in SUSPENDED state, than this is most likely the issue.
>>
>> Or, you might have hit the well-known issue HAL where it fails to
>> restore ACLs sometimes and thus PA is not able to reopen the device
>> properly. Check getfacl /dev/snd/*
> 
> So, I'm intersted in this so I can try to debug this and provide useful
> information for resolving this issue.
> 
> I tried running pactl, but get this:
> 
> [rodd at localhost ~]$ pactl 
> No valid command specified.
> 
> I then tried
> 
> [rodd at localhost ~]$ pactl list-sinks
> No valid command specified.
> 
> Finally I did a check of man pactl and then tried 'pactl list' but this
> gives a huge output, only some of which is 'sinks'.
> 
> How would I tell what state my sound card is in (currently it's working,
> but I wanted to try all this while everything worked so I could see
> what's changed.)

Yeah pactl list is correct, and I think the state is included in the FLAGS, so 
one of the flags included on the line for that on each sink would be SUSPENDED, 
if its not there its not suspended.  I have not yet seen it marked suspended 
when this bug occurs (and rhythmbox freezes).

-- 
Andrew Farris <lordmorgul at gmail.com> www.lordmorgul.net
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No one now has, and no one will ever again get, the big picture. - Daniel Geer
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