Bug#1024549: espeakup: crashes during speech synthesis installation, snd_pcm_area_copy assertion failed

[Arnaud Rebillout]

On 23/11/2022 04:11, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Arnaud Rebillout, le lun. 21 nov. 2022 15:52:47 +0700, a ecrit:
>> It's fairly easy to reproduce, for me it crashes every time, although it
>> doesn't always crash at the same moment of the installation. The exact
>> moment when it crashes seems quite unpredictable.
>>
>> Note that I'm running the iso in a QEMU VM on an up-to-date Debian Sid,
>> so that's qemu-system-x86 7.1+dfsg-2+b2 and linux-image-amd64 6.0.8-1,
>> in case it matters.
> Every detail can matter. Since it's in a vm, normally one should be able
> to reproduce it, but it seems I can't. So please provide all details:
>
> - how exactly you start the VM, notably which audio device do you use

My command is:

kvm -m 4G -cpu host \
-device e1000,netdev=net0 \
-netdev user,id=net0,hostfwd=tcp::10022-:22,hostfwd=tcp::3389-:3389 \
-device intel-hda \
-device hda-duplex \
-spice port=5930,disable-ticketing=on \
-device virtio-serial \
-device virtserialport,chardev=vdagent,name=com.redhat.spice.0 \
-chardev spicevmc,debug=0,id=vdagent,name=vdagent \
-vga qxl \
-virtfs local,mount_tag=home,path=/home/arno,security_model=none \
-drive file=debian-testing-amd64-netinst.img,format=raw \
-boot d -cdrom debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso

I use remote-viewer and SPICE protocol to interact with the VM.


> - during installation, which choices do you make that depart from the
>    default value (language, tasks, etc.)

No choices, I just press Enter and stick with the defaults.

Maybe of interest, I see some errror messages in /var/log/syslog, after 
I confirm the second screen. Here's a good chunk of logs for context, 
the actual errors are the lines with "main-menu[527]: (process:xxxx):":

Nov 23 00:55:38 debconf: Setting debconf/language to en
Nov 23 00:55:38 main-menu[527]: INFO: Falling back to the package 
description for brltty-udeb
Nov 23 00:55:38 main-menu[527]: INFO: Menu item 'localechooser' selected
Nov 23 00:55:40 debconf: Setting debconf/language to en
Nov 23 00:55:47 init: starting pid 507, tty '/dev/tty2': '-/bin/sh'
Nov 23 00:56:05 localechooser: info: Language = 'en'
Nov 23 00:56:05 localechooser: info: line=en;0;US;en_US.UTF-8;;console-setup
Nov 23 00:56:05 localechooser: info: Set debian-installer/language = 'en'
Nov 23 00:56:05 localechooser: info: Default country = 'US'
Nov 23 00:56:05 localechooser: info: Default locale = 'en_US.UTF-8'
Nov 23 00:56:05 localechooser: info: Set debian-installer/consoledisplay 
= 'console-setup'
Nov 23 00:56:05 debconf: Setting debconf/language to en
Nov 23 00:56:08 localechooser: info: Set debian-installer/country = 'US'
Nov 23 00:56:08 localechooser: info: Set debian-installer/locale = 
'en_US.UTF-8'
Nov 23 00:56:08 localechooser: info: System locale 
(debian-installer/locale) = 'en_US.UTF-8'
Nov 23 00:56:08 main-menu[527]: (process:538): ls: 
/usr/share/mbrola/en[1-9]/en[1-9]: No such file or directory
Nov 23 00:56:08 main-menu[527]: (process:538): sh: missing ]
Nov 23 00:56:08 main-menu[527]: (process:538): ls: 
/usr/share/mbrola/en[1-9]/en[1-9]: No such file or directory
Nov 23 00:56:08 main-menu[527]: (process:538): sh: missing ]
Nov 23 00:56:08 main-menu[527]: INFO: Falling back to the package 
description for brltty-udeb
Nov 23 00:56:08 main-menu[527]: INFO: Falling back to the package 
description for brltty-udeb
Nov 23 00:56:08 main-menu[527]: INFO: Falling back to the package 
description for brltty-udeb
Nov 23 00:56:08 main-menu[527]: INFO: Menu item 'brltty-udeb' selected
Nov 23 00:56:08 main-menu[527]: WARNING **: Unable to set title for 
brltty-udeb.
Nov 23 00:56:08 main-menu[527]: INFO: Falling back to the package 
description for brltty-udeb
Nov 23 00:56:08 main-menu[527]: INFO: Falling back to the package 
description for brltty-udeb
Nov 23 00:56:08 main-menu[527]: INFO: Menu item 'espeakup-udeb' selected
Nov 23 00:56:10 main-menu[527]: (process:1753): ls: 
/usr/share/mbrola/en[1-9]/en[1-9]: No such file or directory
Nov 23 00:56:10 main-menu[527]: (process:1753): sh: missing ]
Nov 23 00:56:10 main-menu[527]: INFO: Falling back to the package 
description for brltty-udeb
Nov 23 00:56:10 main-menu[527]: INFO: Falling back to the package 
description for brltty-udeb
Nov 23 00:56:10 main-menu[527]: INFO: Menu item 'console-setup-udeb' 
selected

The errors related to mbrola and sh come from 
debian/espeakup-udeb.restart in src:espeakup. I don't know if it's 
relevant to the issue at hand though.


> Yes, I really doubt the bug is in espeakup (or pcaudiolib) itself since
> these functions are really deep inside alsa, but we have to investigate
> to be sure about it.

Just to confirm, I grabbed the debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso from 
today (2022-11-22) and I can confirm that I can still reproduce the issue.

Another interesting detail is that restarting espeakup makes it speaks 
again, like if nothing happens. So I think it could be useful to have 
something monitor the daemon and restart it in case it crashes. Would 
make it more reliable overall, I suppose. Unfortunately I'm not familiar 
with d-i and I couldn't even find from *where* espeakup is started (no 
etc/init.d, no systemd).

Cheers,

-- 
Arnaud Rebillout / Offensive Security / Kali Linux Developer