Intrepid Sound Fixes

[Nigel Henry]

On Wednesday 19 November 2008 17:58, Steve Flynn wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 4:41 PM, Karl Larsen <k5di at zianet.com> wrote:
> > The trick works inserting "ifconfig wlan0 down" (or the active network
> > interface in use) at the begining of the stop) section of
> > /etc/init.d/alsa-utils.
> >
> > Btw, if your alsa-mixer is always mute at system start, and does not
> > remember the last settings, the trick also fixes it.
>
> Karl, on the basis that you've probably done more digging into this
> than most people, have you come across any information which explains
> *why* dropping ethernet networks fixes a problem with alsa-mixer?
> Makes absolutely no sense to me at all, and I can't actually come up
> with a scenario where even a driver bug would cause something like
> this to happen.
>
> I don't suffer from this issue, but from a technical standpoint I'd be
> quite interested in finding out what the cause of the problem actually
> was... I'd not be overly keen on shoving ifconfig statements into the
> shutdown script for the sound subsystem either, as in 2 years time
> I'll have no idea they are there and if I DO come across them I'll
> have no idea WHY they are there.
>
> Any pointers to relevant webpages/forums/bug-reports would be appreciated.
>
> --
> Steve

Hi Steve. As I was the one that suggested this to Karl, I suppose I should 
answer your enquiry.

First. The link to the bug report, and there are many, many, comments about 
this problem, although not everyone experiences it, or there would be more 
posts to list about it.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-utils/+bug/274995

Now, I'm not using NetworkManager as I couldn't get static addresses to hold 
after a reboot, so disabled the service, and am just using the networking 
service, with /etc/network/interfaces set up manually for my static address 
on the LAN.

I was only getting a 5sec delay in Alsa stopping, but tried an sudo ifdown, 
then on reboot/shutdown, Alsa stopped immediately. Ok. So far so good, and I 
added the suggested line to /etc/init.d/alsa-utils, and again, a 
reboot/shutdown showed no delays in stopping Alsa. Then I suggested that Karl 
try the same, and as it so happens resolved his problem.

Quite why when the network is still up, whether that's eth0, or wlan0, or 
both, if you have both, appear to create this problem for some, is somewhat 
bizarre.

I'm always suspicious of Pulseaudio, when there are problems with the sound 
working, and Pulseaudio does use the network as far as I know, but have never 
experimented with that part of it. If you read through the bug report, 
someone suggested that Pulseaudio may be the problem, rather than the network 
being up when the init scripts were trying to stop Alsa.

He/She said that when they stopped/killed Pulseaudio, prior to 
reboot/shutdown, it proceeded with no delays in stopping Alsa.

Perhaps I've just got it in for Pulseaudio. I see it started in /etc/rc2,3,4, 
and 5.d, but not seeing the daemon stopped on reboot/shutdown.

Any suggestions as how to stop the Pulseaudio daemon on reboot/shutdown? That 
is before Alsa is stopped. That is stopping the Pulseaudio daemon during the 
reboot/shutdown process, rather than killing it while still logged in to 
Gnome.

2hrs later, and much puzzling over this problem.

Nigel.