Bug#752762: load-module module-alsa-sink freezes display

[Felipe Sateler]

Control: tags -1 moreinfo unreproducible

Hi Michael,

On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 7:24 AM, Michael Meskes <meskes at debian.org> wrote:
> Package: pulseaudio
> Version: 5.0-2
> Severity: grave
>
> I simply uncommented the line "#load-module module-alsa-sink" in
> /etc/pulse/default.pa and resarted pulseaudio to completely freeze my X. Mouse
> was still working but I wasn't able to focus on any window, let alone type into
> one or log out. After a reboot I noticed that with that setting my whole X
> sessions starts up, but the screen remains blank.

This looks bad, but I cannot reproduce it.

>
> According to syslog the module failed to load:
>
> Jun 26 12:54:57 feivel pulseaudio[3128]: [pulseaudio] module.c: Failed to load module "module-alsa-sink" (argument: ""): initialization failed.

Yes, this is expected, because that module needs the card details to
load. Is this message shown only once, or repeatedly? Does the log say
afterwards:

[pulseaudio] main.c: Module load failed.
[pulseaudio] main.c: Failed to initialize daemon.

?

> But that IMO hardly qualifies as a reason for the display to disappear. It'd also be
> interesting to know why the module failed, but there doesn't seem to be
> anything in the logs.

Indeed.

What DE/WM are you using? Were there sounds being played at the moment?

This error is weird, because the module load failure should just cause
pulseaudio to exit. Perhaps something caused PA to respawn repeatedly?

>
> I tried using this module in an attempt to figure out why my sound doesn't work
> correctly, or in other words, not at all when using the defaults.

For this, try using pavucontrol. There you can see if your card is
actually being picked up.

>
> Finally I'm not sure about the severity, but you can (and I did) lose data because of the loss of the X session.

This does look bad so I'm not downgrading it yet.


-- 

Saludos,
Felipe Sateler