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Pulseaudio regularly crashing; how to evaluate?

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  Pulseaudio regularly crashing; how to evaluate? "Dr. Jennifer Nussbaum" <bg271828@yahoo.com> - 2021-12-03 16:50 +0100
    Re: Pulseaudio regularly crashing; how to evaluate? Christian Britz <cbritz@t-online.de> - 2021-12-03 17:10 +0100
    Re: Pulseaudio regularly crashing; how to evaluate? "Dr. Jennifer Nussbaum" <bg271828@yahoo.com> - 2021-12-08 15:40 +0100
      Re: Pulseaudio regularly crashing; how to evaluate? Cindy Sue Causey <butterflybytes@gmail.com> - 2021-12-08 16:20 +0100

#242654 — Pulseaudio regularly crashing; how to evaluate?

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For the last month or so, Pulseaudio has been crashing for me. It seems to happen only when I use certain apps, such as watching video with VLC,or watching embedded videos in Firefox. It does not happen when listening to audio through an audio player, or having Zoom calls. After a crash,the Pulseaudio Volume Control will give a "connecting to Pulseaudio" error. Restarting with either "pulseaudio --start" or "pulseaudio -k" will hang for10-20 seconds, and then "work", in that "ps" will show Pulse is running, but I still can't play music (through anything), and the volume app shows thesame error. This will last a few minutes, until sound starts again.
This was on Bullseye; I recently upgraded to Bookworm (for other reasons, though I hoped it would help with this), and it's still happening, althoughnow "pulseaudio --start" will respond almost instantly. However, it still takes a few minutes for sound to come back.
Where do I look for help on this? /var/log/messages shows warnings about a deprecated module, but nothing more serious than that. I'm not sure wherethese crashes might be recorded, or what else to do. But having sound is very important to me, so I'd love to fix this!

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#242655

Hello Jennifer,

while I can't help you fix the particular pulseaudio problem, I might
have an alternative for you, since you are already using the bookworm
distribution.

Try installing the package pipewire-pulse. It contains a pulseaudio
daemon replacement, which works without any problems for me. As I
understand it, pipewire is (among other things) the designated successor
of pulseaudio.

You might have to disable the pulseaudio daemon (through systemd?). I
have even uninstalled pulseaudio just now that I was looking at that
topic, I will inform you, if audio is gone after next boot...

Regards,
Christian


Dr. Jennifer Nussbaum wrote:
> For the last month or so, Pulseaudio has been crashing for me. It seems
> to happen only when I use certain apps, such as watching video with VLC,
> or watching embedded videos in Firefox. It does not happen when
> listening to audio through an audio player, or having Zoom calls. After
> a crash,
> the Pulseaudio Volume Control will give a "connecting to Pulseaudio"
> error. Restarting with either "pulseaudio --start" or "pulseaudio -k"
> will hang for
> 10-20 seconds, and then "work", in that "ps" will show Pulse is running,
> but I still can't play music (through anything), and the volume app
> shows the
> same error. This will last a few minutes, until sound starts again.
> 
> This was on Bullseye; I recently upgraded to Bookworm (for other
> reasons, though I hoped it would help with this), and it's still
> happening, although
> now "pulseaudio --start" will respond almost instantly. However, it
> still takes a few minutes for sound to come back.
> 
> Where do I look for help on this? /var/log/messages shows warnings about
> a deprecated module, but nothing more serious than that. I'm not sure where
> these crashes might be recorded, or what else to do. But having sound is
> very important to me, so I'd love to fix this!

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#242774

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 I wonder if there might be any other thoughts on this (aside from that of replacing Pulseaudio with its successor, which I'm not comfortable with)? 

The flakiness is particularly worrying--that only certain applications will crash with it.

Thanks.
     On Friday, December 3, 2021, 10:46:23 AM EST, Dr. Jennifer Nussbaum <bg271828@yahoo.com> wrote:  
 
 For the last month or so, Pulseaudio has been crashing for me. It seems to happen only when I use certain apps, such as watching video with VLC,or watching embedded videos in Firefox. It does not happen when listening to audio through an audio player, or having Zoom calls. After a crash,the Pulseaudio Volume Control will give a "connecting to Pulseaudio" error. Restarting with either "pulseaudio --start" or "pulseaudio -k" will hang for10-20 seconds, and then "work", in that "ps" will show Pulse is running, but I still can't play music (through anything), and the volume app shows thesame error. This will last a few minutes, until sound starts again.
This was on Bullseye; I recently upgraded to Bookworm (for other reasons, though I hoped it would help with this), and it's still happening, althoughnow "pulseaudio --start" will respond almost instantly. However, it still takes a few minutes for sound to come back.
Where do I look for help on this? /var/log/messages shows warnings about a deprecated module, but nothing more serious than that. I'm not sure wherethese crashes might be recorded, or what else to do. But having sound is very important to me, so I'd love to fix this!  

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#242777

On 12/8/21, Dr. Jennifer Nussbaum <bg271828@yahoo.com> wrote:
>  I wonder if there might be any other thoughts on this (aside from that of
> replacing Pulseaudio with its successor, which I'm not comfortable with)?
>
> The flakiness is particularly worrying--that only certain applications will
> crash with it.


Hi, Jennifer, I just went through a weird crash myself a few days ago.
I didn't do a good job of documenting, either. As fast as I'd click an
icon to open xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin for volume control, the GUI
window would snap back closed.

As best as I can tell, mine began IMMEDIATELY after optional package,
alsamixergui, was upgraded. I deleted that package and haven't had
another instance since.

Prior to deleting alsamixergui, I also tried purging ANYTHING related
to pulseaudio (and eventually anything "pavu") then reinstalling. That
still failed every time.

Sorry I don't have more other than to say maybe figure out the package
name involved in your instance and try opening it in a terminal. Mine
did spew out a few things while it was also snapping back shut going
that route, too.

Afterthought: Just remembered to check my websurfing history. This was
one error message I was receiving:

Failed to load module "module-native-protocol-unix" (argument: ""):
initialization failed. E: [pulseaudio] main.c: D-Bus name
org.pulseaudio.Server already taken.

This was one of the sites I visited that seemed worth saving just
because pipewire is beginning to received online mentions lately:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/793

In the end, my thought process went to the "what upgraded just before
this occurred" place. That's when deleting alsamixergui became the
thing to do.

That alsamixergui package had just been upgraded maybe an hour before
my instance's erratic behavior began (too). May be a coincidence that
pulseaudio's GUI started working again after alsamixergui's deletion.
Then again, might be that alsamixergui's upgrade changed something
important.. or triggered a conflict. Who knows. :)

As a related aside that includes an "ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK"
disclaimer: I ended up test driving "pasystray" while purging and
reinstalling things "pavu". It's a little bit hefty looking and might
be of interest to curious sorts wanting to delve a little deeper into
their systems. Be aware that it might be possible to kill your
system's sound capabilities if your system offers a lot of choices
instead of just one and you're not sure about what you're doing.

Cindy :)
-- 
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA
* runs with birdseed *

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