Re: [ecasound] Overruns are killing me.

On Thu, 27 Oct 2005, Avuton Olrich wrote:

> I've been plagued by overruns, I know it's probably linux device
> driver issues, but wanted to see if anyone could possibly help me find
> the heart of the issue:

Let's see...

> When recording with:
> ecasound -r -i alsahw,0,0 -z:db,300000 -z:intbuf -t:10800 -o x.wav

This is definitely ok. Hmm, but the output look very weird:

> (audioio-db-client) WARNING: Overrun in writing to
> "/mnt/aux/Tmp/new_wavs/howard-stern-channel-100-stump-shower-shoes_2005-10-26.wav".
> Trying to recover.
> (audioio-db-server) wait_for_full failed
> (audioio-db-client) Serious trouble with the disk-io subsystem! (output)
> warning! playback overrun - samples lost! Break was at least 6353.08 ms long.

This means your system has been basicly halted for over 6 seconds due to
some event, blocking both the soundcard (meaning someone is blocking
interrupts) and the disk i/o activity (thus you get errors from both). Six
seconds is a huge time period in kernel world - it's thousand times longer
than any sane driver should be blocking interrupts, so it's a major issue.

Have you tried to tune your disks (google for more links):
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/tunesystem.html

Also, have you tried different kernels? The problem seems like a strange
kernel error-case related to flushing buffers to disk (it queues up too
much data to memory, and then at some point is forced to resolve the
resource allocation conflicts), or something similar.

> Now, this is _only_ for 2 hours, to straight wav. I have tried samples
> of 500000 and it locks up my computer on exit (or 2.6 gig file,
> whichever comes first). I need serious help here, obviously. Any ideas
> of where I can start?

You should be able to avoid the lock-up by upgrading to 2.4.3. From the
release notes:

         - fixed: system-hangs when run in realtime mode and using a large
                  disk i/o double-buffer (-z:db)

--
  links, my public keys, etc at http://eca.cx/kv
-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the JBoss Inc.
Get Certified Today * Register for a JBoss Training Course
Free Certification Exam for All Training Attendees Through End of 2005
Visit http://www.jboss.com/services/certification for more information
_______________________________________________
Ecasound-list mailing list
Ecasound-list@email-addr-hidden
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ecasound-list