Audacity freezes on splash logo

Hello!

All of a sudden, Audacity began to freeze right on the starting logo splash in my Xubuntu machine. All I get is the Audacity logo at the middle of the screen, on top of everything else, and no amount of “sudo kill -9 <>” can make it go away. My only solution to free screen space is reboot, but Audacity steel keeps freezing after reboot (and deletion of lock file from /var/tmp).

I was running version 2.2.1 from official Ubuntu repos, but figured my problem would go away if I updated, so now I’m running the PPA 2.3.2 version, but still without success.

I tried running the self-diagnose “audacity -t” from terminal, but it also freezes, and doesn’t accept any keyboard interrupts, effectively locking my terminal and requiring reboot. Here is a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/MYZZL5n.png.

I’m running Xubuntu Linux 18.04 with 4.15.0 kernel:

nunks@konata:~$ uname -a
Linux konata 4.15.0-62-generic #69-Ubuntu SMP Wed Sep 4 20:55:53 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
nunks@konata:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release 
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=18.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=bionic
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS"

I figure maybe this problem has to do with something else on my system, but I don’t know there to start troubleshooting. Does Audacity have some kind of debug mode that could tell me where it’s freezing?

Thanks!

Hi,

Try running audacity from a terminal. There will be some output and it may indicate what’s wrong. You could also run ldd on the audacity binary and that will indicate if any required libraries are missing.

ATB,
Neil

Hi Neil, thank you for your response!

I tried starting from terminal again and it froze for some time, as I posted before, but after fifteen minutes or so, Audacity finished starting up and sent these messages on my terminal:

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1052:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave                                                                                                                                
ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear                                                                                                                           
ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe                                                                                                                     
ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side                                                                                                                           
ALSA lib pcm_route.c:867:(find_matching_chmap) Found no matching channel map                                                                                                                     
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1052:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave                                                                                                                                
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory                                                                                                                                  
Cannot connect to server request channel                                                                                                                                                         
jack server is not running or cannot be started                                                                                                                                                  
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock                                                                                                                
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for -1, skipping unlock                                                                                                                
21:47:49: Debug: ScreenToClient cannot work when toplevel window is not shown                                                                                                                    
21:47:49: Debug: ScreenToClient cannot work when toplevel window is not shown                                                                                                                    
21:47:49: Debug: ScreenToClient cannot work when toplevel window is not shown                                                                                                                    
21:47:49: Debug: ScreenToClient cannot work when toplevel window is not shown                                                                                                                    
21:47:49: Debug: ScreenToClient cannot work when toplevel window is not shown                                                                                                                    
21:47:49: Debug: ScreenToClient cannot work when toplevel window is not shown                                                                                                                    
21:47:49: Debug: ScreenToClient cannot work when toplevel window is not shown                                                                                                                    
21:47:49: Debug: ScreenToClient cannot work when toplevel window is not shown                                                                                                                    
21:47:49: Debug: ScreenToClient cannot work when toplevel window is not shown                                                                                                                    
Expression 'stream->playback.pcm' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 4628                                                                                                       
Expression 'stream->playback.pcm' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 4628                                                                                                       
Expression 'stream->playback.pcm' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 4628
Expression 'stream->playback.pcm' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 4628
21:47:49: Debug: ScreenToClient cannot work when toplevel window is not shown
(the last message repeats 17 times)
21:47:49: Debug: Unrecognized accel key 'backspace', accel string ignored.
21:47:49: Debug: Unrecognized accel key 'backspace', accel string ignored.
21:47:49: Debug: Unrecognized accel key 'numpad_enter', accel string ignored.
21:47:49: Debug: Unrecognized accel key 'numpad_enter', accel string ignored.
21:47:49: Debug: ClientToScreen cannot work when toplevel window is not shown
(the last message repeats 11 times)

Looks like it’s waiting to use Jack, even when the Jack server is stop (I only use it sporadically to route some MIDI software, and maybe to toy a bit with Ardour). It never happened before, though. I’ll uninstall jackd and see if the problem goes away.

My audio stack is working well, btw, pulseaudio, jack, ardour and fluidsynth are all working ok, it’s just Audacity that is taking a lot of time to start.

I uninstalled jack* and then reinstalled Audacity with no success. It still takes ages to start.
I have lots of free system resources, btw, so I’m ruling out low cpu and memory as a possible cause.

top - 22:13:46 up 7 min,  3 users,  load average: 1,47, 1,21, 0,63
Tasks: 288 total,   1 running, 212 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  3,2 us,  2,8 sy,  0,0 ni, 94,0 id,  0,0 wa,  0,0 hi,  0,0 si,  0,0 st
KiB Mem : 16310156 total, 11747372 free,  2653820 used,  1908964 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 12108796 total, 12108796 free,        0 used. 13138184 avail Mem

Hi,

The terminal output indicates some issues with sound devices. Do you have an .asoundrc file which could be causing this. I would also check your group memberships permit access to sound hardware. Sometimes subtle changes are made that break things.

ATB,
Neil

Audacity may be hanging on a bad plug-in.
Have you tried resetting Audacity?
Look in your home folder for either of the hidden directories:

.audacity-data
.audacity-files

Delete (or rename) these folders if they exist (at least one of them will exist if Audacity has ever run under your user log-in).