Jackd Problems -- alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 1227061150613.504 msecs

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

In the past I've never had any problems running jackd.  Now I'm getting
a very large number of messages reading:
        **** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 1227061150613.504 msecs
I'm running F9 on an x86_64 system with all updates installed.
Pulseaudio is not running.  Jackd is started via qjackctl.  No past
problems with audio beyond the usual conflicts between pulseaudio and
firefox.

Questions:
(1) What exactly does this message mean?  An "xrun" is a buffer under-
or over-run -- but what does the time interval represent?

(2) Whatever the time interval means, it looks rather large.
1227061150613.504 msec is many days (or maybe years if msec means
millisec and not microsec)  This looks like a misconfiguration of some
kind or a missing component.  Any idea what it might be?

Here is the start of the qjackctl log of the session.

18:53:38.317 Patchbay deactivated.
18:53:38.364 Statistics reset.
18:53:38.566 ALSA connection graph change.
18:53:38.752 ALSA connection change.
18:53:41.050 Startup script...
18:53:41.050 artsshell -q terminate
18:53:42.247 Startup script terminated with exit status=256.
18:53:42.261 JACK is starting...
18:53:42.262 /usr/bin/jackd -R -dalsa -dhw:0 -r48000 -p1024 -n2
18:53:42.267 JACK was started with PID=3423.
jackd 0.109.2
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details
JACK compiled with System V SHM support. 
loading driver ..
apparent rate = 48000
creating alsa driver ... hw:0|hw:0|1024|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|
32bit
control device hw:0
configuring for 48000Hz, period = 1024 frames (21.3 ms), buffer = 2
periods
ALSA: final selected sample format for capture: 16bit little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for capture 
ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 16bit little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for playback
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 1227061150613.504 msecs
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 1227061150613.504 msecs
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 1227061150613.504 msecs
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 1227061150613.504 msecs
...

[Jeremy]

Hello Jonathan,

To get jack running properly you need:
- Planet CCRMA packages 
(http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/) which are not 
available for F9
- low latency kernel, Planet CCRMA also provides these, unfortunately 
not for F9
- zero latency soundcard, an onboard card probably never works without 
an xrun every now and then

An xrun is indeed a buffer under/overrun and could be caused by numerous 
things, always hard to put a finger on it. Could be software, hardware. 
Best is to run jack with a light weight WM like fluxbox or IceWM and to 
use as little other programs as possible. And to switch to another 
version of Fedora (like 7 or 8) for which there are Planet CCRMA 
packages available, otherwise it's no use I think.

Good luck!

Jeremy

Paulo Cavalcanti wrote:
>  
>  
>  On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 1:28 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh(a)pacbell.net 
>  <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>  
>      In the past I've never had any problems running jackd.  Now I'm getting
>      a very large number of messages reading:
>             **** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 1227061150613.504 msecs
>      I'm running F9 on an x86_64 system with all updates installed.
>      Pulseaudio is not running.  Jackd is started via qjackctl.  No past
>      problems with audio beyond the usual conflicts between pulseaudio and
>      firefox.
>  
>      Questions:
>      (1) What exactly does this message mean?  An "xrun" is a buffer under-
>      or over-run -- but what does the time interval represent?
>  
>      (2) Whatever the time interval means, it looks rather large.
>      1227061150613.504 msec is many days (or maybe years if msec means
>      millisec and not microsec)  This looks like a misconfiguration of some
>      kind or a missing component.  Any idea what it might be?
>  
>  
>  The solution depends on your card (I have an Intel onboard card).
>  But this material may give you an idea on what you can try:
>  
>   http://people.atrpms.net/~pcavalcanti/alsa-1.0.15rc2_snd-hda-intel.html#jack
>  
>  
>  -- 
>  Paulo Roma Cavalcanti
>  LCG - UFRJ
>

[Paulo Cavalcanti]

On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 5:13 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh(a)pacbell.net&gt;wrote:

>  On Wed, 2008-11-19 at 18:49 -0200, Paulo Cavalcanti wrote:
>
>  > On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 1:28 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh(a)pacbell.net&gt;
>  wrote:
>  >         In the past I've never had any problems running jackd.  Now I'm
>  getting
>  >         a very large number of messages reading:
>  >                **** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 1227061150613.504 msecs
>  >         I'm running F9 on an x86_64 system with all updates installed.
>  >         Pulseaudio is not running.  Jackd is started via qjackctl.  No
>  past
>  >         problems with audio beyond the usual conflicts between pulseaudio
>  and
>  >         firefox.
>  >
>  >         Questions:
>  >         (1) What exactly does this message mean?  An "xrun" is a buffer
>  under-
>  >         or over-run -- but what does the time interval represent?
>  >
>  >         (2) Whatever the time interval means, it looks rather large.
>  >         1227061150613.504 msec is many days (or maybe years if msec means
>  >         millisec and not microsec)  This looks like a misconfiguration of
>  some
>  >         kind or a missing component.  Any idea what it might be?
>  >
>  >
>  > The solution depends on your card (I have an Intel onboard card).
>  > But this material may give you an idea on what you can try:
>  >
>  >
>
> http://people.atrpms.net/~pcavalcanti/alsa-1.0.15rc2_snd-hda-intel.html#j...
>
>  Thanks for the very useful pointer.  Now I am stuck on what ought to be
>  a very simple problem:  What "option"s can be given to my own driver (or
>  generally any alsa driver)?  My own driver appears to be snd_intel8x0,
>  which is documented at
>         http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Module-intel8x0
>  Unfortunately the "parm:"s (supposing these the possible arguments to an
>  "option" statement in modules.conf) don't seem to include all possible
>  options to be applied to this module.
>
>  Sorry for being so dense - jon
>
>  
 modinfo snd_intel8x0


-- 
Paulo Roma Cavalcanti
LCG - UFRJ

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Thu, 2008-11-20 at 11:16 +0100, Jeremy wrote: 
>  Hello Jonathan,
>  
>  To get jack running properly you need:
>  - Planet CCRMA packages 
>  (http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/) which are not 
>  available for F9
>  - low latency kernel, Planet CCRMA also provides these, unfortunately 
>  not for F9
>  - zero latency soundcard, an onboard card probably never works without 
>  an xrun every now and then
>  
>  An xrun is indeed a buffer under/overrun and could be caused by numerous 
>  things, always hard to put a finger on it. Could be software, hardware. 
>  Best is to run jack with a light weight WM like fluxbox or IceWM and to 
>  use as little other programs as possible. And to switch to another 
>  version of Fedora (like 7 or 8) for which there are Planet CCRMA 
>  packages available, otherwise it's no use I think. 
Thanks for the info.  The fancy kernels, etc. are probably not necessary
to avoid xruns in a properly configured Fedora system with a strong
enough CPU, etc.  My own CPU is AMD x86_64 running at about 1 GHz.  In
the past I have had typically 1 xrun per hour, which hasn't affected the
sound quality of recordings perceptibly.

However your message doesn't answer the question: what does the time
interval associated with an xrun mean?  Do you (or anyone else) know?  A
reply to this question posted on the Jack-devel list indicates that the
very long time interval here is the result of a bug in this version of
jackd:
        MarcO'Chapeau <marco(a)marcochapeau.org&gt; writes: 
        That's a bug fixed after 0.109.2 I'd say (is that still only in SVN ?).
It
        was due to a comparison of 2 timestamps not coming from the same clock
        source afair
I have only one clock afaik on my system but who knows...

An attempt to build jackd on my system has failed due to problems in
portaudio as released in the F9 distro.  More on this in my next message
to the list.

Thanks - jon

[Paulo Cavalcanti]

On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 1:28 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh(a)pacbell.net&gt;wrote:

>  In the past I've never had any problems running jackd.  Now
> I'm getting
>  a very large number of messages reading:
>         **** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 1227061150613.504 msecs
>  I'm running F9 on an x86_64 system with all updates installed.
>  Pulseaudio is not running.  Jackd is started via qjackctl.  No past
>  problems with audio beyond the usual conflicts between pulseaudio and
>  firefox.
>
>  Questions:
>  (1) What exactly does this message mean?  An "xrun" is a buffer under-
>  or over-run -- but what does the time interval represent?
>
>  (2) Whatever the time interval means, it looks rather large.
>  1227061150613.504 msec is many days (or maybe years if msec means
>  millisec and not microsec)  This looks like a misconfiguration of some
>  kind or a missing component.  Any idea what it might be?
>
>  
The solution depends on your card (I have an Intel onboard card).
But this material may give you an idea on what you can try:


http://people.atrpms.net/~pcavalcanti/alsa-1.0.15rc2_snd-hda-intel.html#jack


-- 
Paulo Roma Cavalcanti
LCG - UFRJ

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Wed, 2008-11-19 at 18:49 -0200, Paulo Cavalcanti wrote:

>  On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 1:28 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan
> <jonrysh(a)pacbell.net&gt; wrote:
>          In the past I've never had any problems running jackd.  Now I'm getting
>          a very large number of messages reading:
>                 **** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 1227061150613.504 msecs
>          I'm running F9 on an x86_64 system with all updates installed.
>          Pulseaudio is not running.  Jackd is started via qjackctl.  No past
>          problems with audio beyond the usual conflicts between pulseaudio and
>          firefox.
>          
>          Questions:
>          (1) What exactly does this message mean?  An "xrun" is a buffer under-
>          or over-run -- but what does the time interval represent?
>          
>          (2) Whatever the time interval means, it looks rather large.
>          1227061150613.504 msec is many days (or maybe years if msec means
>          millisec and not microsec)  This looks like a misconfiguration of some
>          kind or a missing component.  Any idea what it might be?
>          
>  
>  The solution depends on your card (I have an Intel onboard card). 
>  But this material may give you an idea on what you can try:
>  
>   http://people.atrpms.net/~pcavalcanti/alsa-1.0.15rc2_snd-hda-intel.html#jack 
Thanks for the very useful pointer.  Now I am stuck on what ought to be
a very simple problem:  What "option"s can be given to my own driver (or
generally any alsa driver)?  My own driver appears to be snd_intel8x0,
which is documented at
        http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Module-intel8x0
Unfortunately the "parm:"s (supposing these the possible arguments to an
"option" statement in modules.conf) don't seem to include all possible
options to be applied to this module.

Sorry for being so dense - jon