Pulseaudio freezes in Totem, Severe audio lag and pausing

output from terminal when audio locked up:

jdf@jdf-desktop:~$ sudo killall pulseaudio

jdf@jdf-desktop:~$ pulseaudio -D
W: ltdl-bind-now.c: Failed to find original dlopen loader.
jdf@jdf-desktop:~$ totem --debug
** (totem:32012): DEBUG: Init of Python module
** (totem:32012): DEBUG: Registering Python plugin instance: YouTube+TotemPythonPlugin
** (totem:32012): DEBUG: Creating object of type YouTube+TotemPythonPlugin
** (totem:32012): DEBUG: Creating Python plugin instance
** (totem:32012): DEBUG: Init of Python module
** (totem:32012): DEBUG: Registering Python plugin instance: BBCViewer+TotemPythonPlugin
** (totem:32012): DEBUG: Creating object of type BBCViewer+TotemPythonPlugin
** (totem:32012): DEBUG: Creating Python plugin instance
** Message: Error: Disconnected: Entity killed
pulsesink.c(684): gst_pulsesink_write (): /GstPlayBin:play/GstBin:abin/GstBin:audiosinkbin/GstGConfAudioSink:audio-sink/GstBin:bin11/GstAutoAudioSink:autoaudiosink8/GstPulseSink:autoaudiosink8-actual-sink-pulse

^C
jdf@jdf-desktop:~$

You need to use: pulseaudio -D -vv

output of pulseaudio -D -vv:

jdf@jdf-desktop:~$ sudo killall pulseaudio

jdf@jdf-desktop:~$ pulseaudio -D -vv
I: main.c: PolicyKit refuses acquire-high-priority privilige.
I: main.c: Called SUID root and real-time/high-priority scheduling was requested in the configuration. However, we lack the necessary priviliges:
I: main.c: We are not in group 'pulse-rt' and PolicyKit refuse to grant us priviliges. Dropping SUID again.
I: main.c: For enabling real-time scheduling please acquire the appropriate PolicyKit priviliges, or become a member of 'pulse-rt', or increase the RLIMIT_NICE/RLIMIT_RTPRIO resource limits for this user.
I: main.c: Note that real-time/high-priority scheduling is NOT normally required. If you experience crackling or other sound anomalies, consider one or more of the above solutions.
I: main.c: High-priority scheduling enabled in configuration but now allowed by policy. Disabling forcibly.
W: ltdl-bind-now.c: Failed to find original dlopen loader.
I: main.c: daemon startup successful.

I'm under the assumption that the problems regarding not being root would not apply when pulseaudio is started at boot. Is that correct?

I am still having this problem. Randomly, but around every 5 minutes, my audio will completely stop playing for a few seconds and then come back on. The music, video, flash, or whatever else will continue operating, and when the sound starts again it doesn't start where it left off, it is as if it was just muted for a few seconds. Also, the sound is still randomly stopping altogether (albeit not in VLC, only in Flash and totem) and I still have to do the killall and restart pulseaudio at least once a day. I have been hoping with all the updates I've seen since Intrepid was released that this problem would be fixed, but it hasn't been. This is marked as a likely-dupe, but I'm not sure about that. There have been others with similar problems, but their issues seem to have been fixed when the race condition was rectified. My issue was not.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can further troubleshoot this or gather more information to help this get fixed? Does anyone know where the logs are stored for the Adobe Flash plugin? Maybe they would contain some information. I'm going to restart and check the system logs to see if I can discern anything from that. I'll post the pertinent info if I find any. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. It's really annoying to have to close my browser and restart pulseaudio every time I want to visit YouTube.

dmesg:

[ 20.380608] VIA 82xx Audio 0000:00:11.5: PCI INT C -> Link[ALKC] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22
[ 20.380827] VIA 82xx Audio 0000:00:11.5: setting latency timer to 64

/var/log/user.log:
Jan 5 17:25:35 jdf-desktop pulseaudio[5809]: ltdl-bind-now.c: Failed to find original dlopen loader.
Jan 5 17:25:35 jdf-desktop pulseaudio[5811]: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operation not permitted
Jan 5 17:25:35 jdf-desktop pulseaudio[5811]: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_RTPRIO, (9, 9)) failed: Operation not permitted
Jan 5 17:25:35 jdf-desktop pulseaudio[5811]: alsa-util.c: Device front:0 doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz.
Jan 5 17:25:50 jdf-desktop pulseaudio[5811]: module-x11-xsmp.c: X11 session manager not running.
Jan 5 17:25:50 jdf-desktop pulseaudio[5811]: module.c: Failed to load module "module-x11-xsmp" (argument: ""): initialization failed.

~/.pulse/default-sink:
alsa_output.pci_1106_3059_sound_card_0_alsa_playback_0

Can't view the contents of ~/.pulse-cookie

Are there any other logs anywhere? I couldn't find anything in /var/log other than dmesg and user.log and there are no logs in ~/.pulse

Any updates on this? I'm having the same problems..

Damon.

I have a possible workaround: looking for a solution to a problem I've been having which sounds quite similar, I first found this bug then found that editing /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and doubling the default-fragments parameter appears to have fixed things.

As an extra bonus, not only is pulseaudio not spiking cpu usage, it also seems to be using less CPU while running normally...

Thanks! I'll give it a go..

Regards,
Damon.

2009/5/3 Andrew Aylett <email address hidden>:
> I have a possible workaround: looking for a solution to a problem I've
> been having which sounds quite similar, I first found this bug then
> found that editing /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and doubling the default-
> fragments parameter appears to have fixed things.
>
> As an extra bonus, not only is pulseaudio not spiking cpu usage, it also
> seems to be using less CPU while running normally...
>
> --
> Pulseaudio freezes in Totem, Severe audio lag and pausing
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/298011
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “pulseaudio” source package in Ubuntu: Incomplete
>
> Bug description:
> There is severe lag on all my audio (in Flash, in Totem, in VLC, everywhere) since the upgrade to 8.10 (present in Beta and Final release). The audio will randomly pause for a few seconds (sometimes up to 10) and then continue. Sometimes it will start where it left off, other times it skips ahead different amounts (up to as long as it's been paused). It feels like there's some kind of issue with the buffering (not over the net, but the audio buffer).
>
> I'm not sure if it's related, but the worse problem is that pulseaudio is freezing. In beta this happened when watching flash video and it locked up firefox. Since the full release and a fresh install that hasn't happened, but it continues to randomly lock up Totem and I have to force quit, then open a terminal and sudo killall pulseaudio and pulseaudio -D to get the sound working again. When this happens, sound continues to work in VLC but not flash videos in firefox. VLC has not locked up the sound in Beta or the full release.
>
> There aren't any crash reports to submit. I will open totem through the command line and try to get it to lock up and see what output it shows.
>

That mostly worked for me, now it only does it about once per two songs, instead of three or four times each.
Thanks!

You could try doubling it again, and maybe doubling the size of default-fragment-size-msec.

Note that this is very much a workaround rather than a fix -- as far as I can tell, it shouldn't be necessary. Then, I'm not entirely sure what (if any) negative consequences there might be, apart from the obvious slightly higher memory usage. I presume there's some rationale for the defaults...

This bug was fixed in the package pulseaudio - 1:0.9.22~0.9.21+341-g62bf-0ubuntu1

---------------
pulseaudio (1:0.9.22~0.9.21+341-g62bf-0ubuntu1) lucid; urgency=low

  * New snapshot based on stable-queue git branch (testing requested
    specifically by upstream)
    - LP: #164745, #173212, #201391, #204536, #207796, #210016, #221038,
    - LP: #226342, #230408, #236423, #237443, #250059, #269585, #274304,
    - LP: #274577, #275474, #277532, #277566, #277932, #278025, #280534,
    - LP: #283049, #286816, #287036, #292732, #298011, #298301, #300290,
    - LP: #302038, #311497, #311853, #324062, #339448, #344057, #348979,
    - LP: #350829, #356206, #367379, #367544, #369822, #371897, #374846,
    - LP: #375570, #381801, #399515, #402950, #403786, #408169, #409322,
    - LP: #409723, #410326, #410446, #417695, #417976, #419271, #421072,
    - LP: #422774, #423979, #424655, #425028, #427016, #431072, #432660,
    - LP: #437640, #437996, #442191, #443306, #443389, #446719, #449762,
    - LP: #455417, #461532, #464652, #483191, #497537, #503780
  * debian/patches/:
    + add: 0099-change-configure-git-version-tag.patch: Match released
           upstream 0.9.21 for shlibs and LIBPULSE_VERSION_INFO
    - drop: 0004-set-tsched0.patch (no longer relevant)
            0050-revert-pacmd-poll-argv.patch (no longer relevant)
            0056-dont-bail-on-sound-class-modem.patch (merged)
            0056-ignore-sound-class-modem.patch (merged)
            0058-Backport-4c793.patch (merged)
            0059-Backport-978d3.patch (merged)
            0060-fix-implicit-func-decl-cpu-arm.patch (merged)
            0061-Backport-c5fdb.patch (merged)
            0070-dont-bail-on-sound-class-modem-devs.patch (merged)
    + refresh: 0001-change-resample-and-buffering.patch
               0090-disable-flat-volumes.patch
               0091-dont-load-cork-music-on-phone.patch
               0057-load-module-x11-bell.patch
 -- Daniel T Chen <email address hidden> Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:33:05 -0500