[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#741554: alsa-base: Invalid PCM pointer with CMI8738

[Andoru]

Package: alsa-base
Version: 1.0.25+3
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

I've been having this problem on CrunchBang 11 "Waldorf" which is based off
Debian Wheezy (I think)
I've had to restart the PC 4 times because of this. Every time I try to listen
to something, at random points it "hiccups" (basically keeps repeating the last
few ms of what I was listening, probably what was on the buffer) and the whole
OS becomes unresponsive, CPU raises at around 95-100% at which point I can't do
anything but turn the PC off. The GUI (TTY7) becomes very unresponsive (for
example when I move a window from one place to another, it slowly creeps to the
destination. Also TTYs 1-6 are unusuable as they get flooded with this error:
[XXXXX.XXXXXX] cmipci: invalid PCM pointer: 0xffff
X = random number that keeps increasing.
I was mainly listening to music over VLC also tried cmus. On the 3rd and 4th
time after restarting I tried I changing the output module from pulse (knowing
it can be problematic at times) to alsa but that didn't fix anything.

   * What led up to the situation?

Nothing in particular, this has been happening since I installed the distro. It
even behaved this way in the LiveCD session.

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

I tried to add the unstable repositories in the hope that a more recent version
of ALSA might have fixed this bug but it was not the case.

   * What was the outcome of this action?

At first, since it took some time for the error/bug to show up, I thought
updating fixed everything, but after 1-2 hours of listening to music the
problem resurfaced.

   * What outcome did you expect instead?

Sound to work continiously without this error popping up and rendering my PC
completely unusuable.

I'm not sure if this is a debian-specific bug as I haven't exited the Debian-
sphere, but if this isn't related to Debian itself, please prompt me to send
this to ALSA instead.
Thank you in advance.



-- Package-specific info:
--- Begin additional package status ---
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
+++-==============-============-============-=================================
ii  libasound2:i38 1.0.27.2-3   i386         shared library for ALSA applicati
--- End additional package status ---
--- Begin /proc/asound/version ---
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version k3.12-1-686-pae.
--- End /proc/asound/version ---
--- Begin /proc/asound/cards ---
 0 [CMI8738        ]: CMI8738-MC6 - C-Media CMI8738
                      C-Media CMI8738 (model 55) at 0xe000, irq 18
--- End /proc/asound/cards ---
--- Begin /dev/snd/ listing ---
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root       60 Mar 13 19:23 by-path
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  9 Mar 13 19:23 controlC0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  8 Mar 13 19:23 hwC0D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  2 Mar 13 19:23 midiC0D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  7 Mar 13 19:24 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  6 Mar 13 19:24 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  5 Mar 13 19:24 pcmC0D1p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  4 Mar 13 19:24 pcmC0D2c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  3 Mar 13 19:24 pcmC0D2p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  1 Mar 13 19:23 seq
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 33 Mar 13 19:23 timer
--- End /dev/snd/ listing ---

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.12-1-686-pae (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages alsa-base depends on:
ii  dpkg    1.17.6
ii  kmod    16-2
ii  procps  1:3.3.9-2
ii  udev    204-7

Versions of packages alsa-base recommends:
ii  alsa-utils  1.0.27.2-1

Versions of packages alsa-base suggests:
pn  alsa-oss    <none>
pn  oss-compat  <none>

Versions of packages libasound2 depends on:
ii  libasound2-data    1.0.27.2-3
ii  libc6              2.18-4
ii  multiarch-support  2.18-4

Versions of packages libasound2 suggests:
ii  libasound2-plugins  1.0.27-2+b1

-- no debconf information