Bug#1001645: pulseaudio: My system has no sound at all, after upgrading

[Ray Dillinger]

I have the same issue.  Also caused by upgrade. Causes almost any 
program that attempts to play sound to freeze. I twigged that it was 
pulseaudio when a non-pulseaudio using video player was the only 
sound-playing thing on my system that DIDN'T freeze.



And I found a workaround.


When you are about to start an audio stream, open a terminal and enter 
the command:



pulseaudio -k


Then within a few seconds after that, go and start the audio stream. If 
you wait too long it doesn't work.


However, even when it's working you may not hear it, or you may hear it 
at an absurdly low volume, because it may start up with a randomized 
volume level.  I have a pulseaudio plugin named 'pavucontrol' on my 
taskbar. I open that plugin and set the pulseaudio output level to 100%.


"pulseaudio -k" is a command to kill the pulseaudio daemon. I suspect 
that when a new instance of the daemon starts up it's in a usable state 
for a few seconds but then somehow becomes unusable unless actually put 
to work. I have no idea what triggers the unusable state, but it seems 
to happen within fifteen seconds of non-use.


As long as there is continuous audio output after starting the audio 
stream, it works normally. Music players that start playing the next 
song immediately after the previous one ends don't have a problem. But 
if audio output ever completely stops, pulseaudio goes to the unusable 
blocking state within a few seconds.


I've been starting an audiobook with the volume at 0.1% and then 
minimizing the reader.  This keeps the audio channel open for days but 
is completely inaudible on my speakers.  So I can use youtube, play 
sound files on the web, use music players, play games with sound 
effects, etc, at normal volume without problems.



                Bear

Bug#1001645: pulseaudio: My system has no sound at all, after upgrading

[Eduard Bloch]

On Mon, 13 Dec 2021 21:29:34 +0330 alireza  wrote:

> *** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***
>
>* What led up to the situation? upgrade
>* What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
>  ineffective)? upgrade
>* What was the outcome of this action? no sound at all!
>* What outcome did you expect instead? sound !

Dear reporter, you were supposed to enter a detailed description here.

Maybe I can provide mine, does this match your experiences?

since the last update, PA is almost completely BROKEN.

a) ALSA devices which were detected prior to PA start do not work AT
ALL. The only Sink in the mixer is "Dummy-Output".
Log output is something like this:

Failed to load module "module-alsa-card" (argument: "device_id="1" 
name="pci-_09_00.3" card_name="alsa_card.pci-_09_00.3" 
namereg_fail=false tsched=yes fixed_latency_range=no ignore_dB=no 
deferred_volume=yes use_ucm=yes avoid_resampling=no 
card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1""): initialization failed.

b)
When I reconnect the device then it works briefly, for exactly one
stream. Once the stream stops, the device becomes mute. It's still there
but no sound comes out of it.

c) If you restart PA in the condition above, then even the new device is
not detected any longer.

Best regards,
Eduard.

--
 morgen!
 was ist morgen?
 aehm, mittwoch!

Bug#1001645: pulseaudio: My system has no sound at all, after upgrading

[alireza]

Package: pulseaudio
Version: 15.0+dfsg1-2
Severity: important
X-Debbugs-Cc: alireza...@gmail.com

Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

   * What led up to the situation? upgrade
   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
 ineffective)? upgrade
   * What was the outcome of this action? no sound at all!
   * What outcome did you expect instead? sound !

*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***


-- Package-specific info:
File '/etc/default/pulseaudio' does not exist


-- System Information:
Debian Release: bookworm/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (1100, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.15.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, 
TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages pulseaudio depends on:
ii  adduser  3.118
ii  init-system-helpers  1.61
ii  libasound2   1.2.5.1-1
ii  libasound2-plugins   1.2.5-2
ii  libc62.32-5
ii  libcap2  1:2.44-1
ii  libdbus-1-3  1.12.20-3
ii  libfftw3-single3 3.3.8-2
ii  libgcc-s111.2.0-12
ii  libglib2.0-0 2.70.2-1
ii  libice6  2:1.0.10-1
ii  libltdl7 2.4.6-15
ii  liborc-0.4-0 1:0.4.32-1
ii  libpulse015.0+dfsg1-2
ii  libsm6   2:1.2.3-1
ii  libsndfile1  1.0.31-2
ii  libsoxr0 0.1.3-4
ii  libspeexdsp1 1.2~rc1.2-1.1
ii  libstdc++6   11.2.0-12
ii  libsystemd0  249.7-1
ii  libtdb1  1.4.3-1+b1
ii  libudev1 249.7-1
ii  libwebrtc-audio-processing1  0.3-1+b1
ii  libx11-6 2:1.7.2-2+b1
ii  libx11-xcb1  2:1.7.2-2+b1
ii  libxcb1  1.14-3
ii  libxtst6 2:1.2.3-1
ii  lsb-base 11.1.0
ii  pulseaudio-utils 15.0+dfsg1-2

Versions of packages pulseaudio recommends:
ii  dbus-user-session1.12.20-3
ii  libpam-systemd [logind]  249.7-1
ii  rtkit0.13-4

Versions of packages pulseaudio suggests:
pn  paprefs  
pn  pavucontrol  
pn  pavumeter
ii  udev 249.7-1

-- no debconf information
# This file is part of PulseAudio.
#
# PulseAudio is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# PulseAudio is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
# General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
# along with PulseAudio; if not, see .

## Configuration file for PulseAudio clients. See pulse-client.conf(5) for
## more information. Default values are commented out.  Use either ; or # for
## commenting.

; default-sink =
; default-source =
; default-server =
; default-dbus-server =

; autospawn = yes
; daemon-binary = /usr/bin/pulseaudio
; extra-arguments = --log-target=syslog

; cookie-file =

; enable-shm = yes
; shm-size-bytes = 0 # setting this 0 will use the system-default, usually 64 
MiB

; auto-connect-localhost = no
; auto-connect-display = no
# This file is part of PulseAudio.
#
# PulseAudio is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# PulseAudio is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
# General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
# along with PulseAudio; if not, see .

## Configuration file for the PulseAudio daemon. See pulse-daemon.conf(5) for
## more information. Default values are commented out.  Use either ; or # for
## commenting.

; daemonize = no
; fail = yes
; allow-module-loading = yes
; allow-exit = yes
; use-pid-file = yes
; system-instance = no
; local-server-type = user
; enable-shm = yes
; enable-memfd = yes
; shm-size-bytes = 0 # setting this 0 will use the system-default, usually 64 
MiB
; lock-memory =