[gentoo-user] psi+ and aplay/paplay lock up (?)

[gentoo-user] psi+ and aplay/paplay lock up (?)

[Kacper Kopczyński]

Hi,

For a long time now I experience strange behaviour of sound player configured 
in Psi (jabber communicator).

Psi for every sound starts /usr/bin/aplay. Sometimes that program blocks sound 
device so that nothing else can play, and every other program started just 
locks up. So that number of 'aplay' grows with every event from psi. After I 
kill them all everything works fine until another lockup. Sometimes I need to 
kill flash, mplayer and other programs playing to "fix" this.

I thought that the problem is related to access to soundcard - "there can be 
only one" program playing, and I have made ~/.asoundrc :
------------------------------------------------
pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "mixall"
}

ctl.!default {
    type hw
    card 0
}

pcm.dsp0 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "mixall"
}

pcm.dsp1 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "mixall"
}

pcm.mixall {
    type asym
    playback {
                pcm "mixout"
    }
    capture {
                pcm "mixin"
    }
}

pcm.mixin {
    type dsnoop
    ipc_key 678929
    ipc_key_add_uid true
    slave {
                pcm "hw:0,0"
                channels 2
                periods 0
                period_time 0
                period_size 1024
                buffer_size 16384
                rate 44100
    }
 #bindings {
  #0 0
  #0 1
 #}
}

ctl.mixin {
        type hw
        card 0
}

pcm.mixout {
    type dmix
    ipc_key 882921
    ipc_key_add_uid true
    slave {
                pcm "hw:0,0"
                period_time 0
                period_size 1024
                buffer_size 16384
                rate 44100
    }
 #bindings {
  #0 0
  #1 1
 #}
}

ctl.mixout {
        type hw
        card 0
}

------------------------------

but it did not solve my problem. Another idea was to recompile my system with 
support for pulseaudio and ~/.asoundrc is:
------------------------------
pcm.pulse {
        type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
        type pulse
}

pcm.!default {
        type pulse
}

ctl.!default {
        type hw
}
---------------------------
(I am in groups pulse and pulse-access groups)
With same results. (ctl.!default with type hw instead of pulse because mixer 
under xfce was "jumping" with sound level for every sound played)

My next idea was to change aplay to paplay... then to change paplay with 
aplay -Dpulse -N (non blocking mode...), and nothing...

I haven't found anything on google... or I don't know what to look for :)

My temporary solution is to pkill -9 aplay from cron every minute.

I have tried to recreate this situation on my own in terminal with:

for i in `seq 10`; do (aplay /usr/share/psi/sound/ft_complete.wav &); done

but with no luck.

lsmod:
----------------------------------------------------
Module                  Size  Used by
michael_mic             1484  8 
hidp                    9100  2 
hid                    34494  1 hidp
rfcomm                 24833  0 
l2cap                  26115  8 hidp,rfcomm
bluetooth              41286  3 hidp,rfcomm,l2cap
ipv6                  207660  24 
nf_conntrack_ipv4       8696  1 
nf_defrag_ipv4           965  1 nf_conntrack_ipv4
iptable_filter          1154  1 
ipt_addrtype            1398  0 
xt_DSCP                 1441  0 
xt_dscp                 1097  0 
xt_string                890  0 
xt_owner                 782  0 
xt_NFQUEUE              1523  0 
xt_multiport            1217  0 
xt_mark                  795  0 
xt_iprange              1062  0 
xt_hashlimit            5147  0 
xt_conntrack            1966  1 
xt_connmark             1291  0 
ip_tables               7935  1 iptable_filter
snd_seq_dummy           1138  0 
snd_seq_oss            20110  0 
snd_seq_midi_event      5046  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq                37161  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device          4872  3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss            26034  0 
snd_mixer_oss          10104  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_hda_codec_realtek   196127  1 
usb_storage            28352  0 
usb_libusual            9069  1 usb_storage
snd_hda_intel          18465  3 
snd_hda_codec          65149  2 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep               4232  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                52948  3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
ehci_hcd               27353  0 
uhci_hcd               16412  0 
r8187se               115923  0 
snd_timer              14696  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
r8169                  30385  0 
snd_page_alloc          6110  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
usbcore               115692  4 usb_storage,usb_libusual,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
i2c_i801                6522  0 
sg                     18051  0 
eeprom_93cx6            1272  1 r8187se
mii                     3765  1 r8169
joydev                  7009  0 
rtc_cmos                7151  0 
rtc_core               11303  1 rtc_cmos
rtc_lib                 1962  1 rtc_core
----------------------------------------------

and USE flags for alsa:

capsel@ai ~ $ emerge alsa-utils psi alsa-lib -pv

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild   R   ] media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.21a  USE="python -alisp -debug -doc" 
ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug 
file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null 
plug rate route share shm softvol" 790 kB
[ebuild   R   ] net-im/psi-0.14-r1  USE="crypt dbus extras jingle spell ssl 
webkit xscreensaver -debug -doc" LINGUAS="pl -be -cs -de -fr -it -ja -pt_BR -
ru -sl -sv -ur_PK -zh_TW" 7,880 kB
[ebuild   R   ] media-sound/alsa-utils-1.0.21-r1  USE="nls -doc -minimal" 
1,050 kB

I've runned out of ideas, please help me :)
-- 
Kacper Kopczyński