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?
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.
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.
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.
