Re: [ecasound] Ecasound git freezes

Hi,

On Sat, 1 Aug 2009, Julien Claassen wrote:

> I just pulled ecasound two days ago and it freezed my computer. I reverted
> back to 2.6.0 release. Unfortunitely Ican't tell you what happened, because
> the system was totally locked. So no braille-display movement. I just started
> up with jack, something like;
> ecasound -c -i in.wav -o jack_alsa

thanks for reporting this. The current git has a few changes to core
engine that could in theory trigger lockups with real-time scheduling.
Especially the new OSC code needed some "infrastructure updates" that
could in theory affect other use-cases as well. I've also started using a
few new kernel/system interfaces (e.g. recursive pthread mutexes) that can
expose ecasound to bug/features in the implementation of these interfaces.
But all in all the changes are fairly conservative still.

Hmm, but you had a lockup and that's indeed worrying. In any case a lot of
testing is still needed before the next release.

A good way to debug this (and always a good practise when running
development code with real-time privileges), is to always run das_watchdog
(or similar app) on the background:

http://www.notam02.no/arkiv/src/
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/linux-audio-announce/2007-January/000909.html

It will downgrade any runaways processes back to SCHED_OTHER, and send a
note (via X popup _and_ entry to syslog). Most distros have in readily
available in their package repository.

By running the watchdog, you can more safely test development code, plus
as another big benefit, you get a clear note if the lockup happens due to
RT process busylooping. Hardware/driver problems are always another
possibility and this allows to filter at least some of those away
(although not 100% sure, as some driver issues also show up as busylooping
in user-space apps).

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Received on Wed Aug 5 00:15:06 2009