Sound stops working a few minutes after starting

[Der_Alte]

Weird problem here, all sound simply stops working a few minutes after I start Nexuiz. If i close it, works the sound fine in all other applications, and when I start Nexuiz again, the sound works...for a few minutes, at which point it stops working again. I'm using Linux and I run the glx version.

[Psychcf]

What distro are you running?

[Der_Alte]

What distro are you running?

Ubuntu 8.04

[Jason Quinn]

This problem appeared with the first 2.4 release and has been here ever since. Sound completely stops randomly. Sometimes very soon, other times it might not drop at all. The average time is about 5 to 10 minutes. I have experienced it on two machines. A laptop and a desktop. It never happened with 2.3 releases.

I have checked the console output and there's no error. There is occasionally a "Bad Track Number 0" message (or something close to that) but not always. This might be related but I think it is just a unrelated confusing message. When the audio kicks out on the laptop, the screen dims ever so slightly. It is almost as though something went wrong with the graphics card that affected the sound (or vice versa). I have tried all the different ways to start up Nex (nexius-linux-x64-decicated,glx,sdx) and they all do the same thing.

The Desktop is a 3.4 GHz Pentium D running Ubuntu 8.04 and lspci reports the following (but I think the actual cards are generic MSI cards):
00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] (rev a1)

The laptop is a Intel Core 2 Duo running 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04 but the error also occurred when I was using KUbuntu 7.10. It has:
Integrated Intel High Definition Audio 2.0
256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600

Keep up the great dev work, guys! Nex is an awesome game
Jason

PS I beat the final rage level yesterday with the other three bots only have 5, 3, and 1 kills!! Not too shabby.

[esteel]

I guess this here helps: http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.ph ... creensaver

I should put this in a more public place but for now i use this script that does the following things: stop the scrensaver from firing up, switch keyboard layout to basic US for console and X, start the given paramter(s) with the aoss libs loaded so OSS programs will use the alsa wrapper and then afterwards switch to 'my' US intl keyboard layout, change gamma to 1 in case a game crashed with custom gamma settings and reenable the screensaver.. works fine for me.
you can also putin
synclient touchpadoff=1
synclient touchpadoff=0
to disable/reenable the touchpad of a laptop..

Code: Select all

#! /bin/sh

[ -x "`which aoss`" ] && aoss=aoss
if [ -x "`which gnome-screensaver-command`" ]; then
   gnome-screensaver-command -i &
   inhibit=$?
fi

loadkeys -c -u -s us
setxkbmap -symbols "pc(pc105)+us"

$aoss "$@"

setxkbmap -symbols "pc(pc105)+us(intl)+group(alts_toggle)"
loadkeys -c -u -s us-intl.iso15
xgamma -gamma 1

[ -n "$inhibit" ] && kill $inhibit

[Jason Quinn]

I guess this here helps: http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.ph ... creensaver

I read the other thread. Sounds exactly the same problem. It's nice to know that there's a work-a-round. But is this a bug with Nexuiz, gnome-screensaver, or Compiz Fusion? I am also using Compiz fusion on my laptop and desktop and I wasn't using Compiz Fusion back when I was playing Nex 2.3. This seems to strongly suggest Compiz Fusion is causing the problem or at least some compatibility problem between Compiz and gnome-screensaver. Perhaps we should contact them to let them know.

Jason

[esteel]

I'm not even sure.. but its not a compiz thing as i have had the same problem and do not use compiz (very often..). And from what i get X11 has no real concept of a fullscreen application so i doubt gnome screensaver can notice a game is running.
There must be ways beside gnome-screensaver-command to disable/inhibit screensavers from starting as i'm sure other games do that too but i have no idea how generic those ways are..

[Jason Quinn]

I'm not even sure.. but its not a compiz thing as i have had the same problem and do not use compiz (very often..). And from what i get X11 has no real concept of a fullscreen application so i doubt gnome screensaver can notice a game is running.
There must be ways beside gnome-screensaver-command to disable/inhibit screensavers from starting as i'm sure other games do that too but i have no idea how generic those ways are..

Hmmmmmm. Okay with your experience, we can rule out Compiz. And I never had a sound-cutting off problem with Nex 2.3. I was using Kubuntu 7.10 at the time, which also uses X11. So it seems like X11 is not the problem either. That leaves only these possibilities:

1) an X11 update since the version distributed with KUbuntu 7.10
2) gnome-screensaver itself.
3) a Nex 2.4 regression

I suppose I could try a different screensaver to see if it also produces the problem. (It is definitely the screensaver starting that is causing the problem as I tested it last night). I could also try going back to Nex 2.3 and see if I get the problem on my current platform.

Jason

[esteel]

Maybe its an regression, i think the mouse/keyboard grapping in fullscreenmode was changed. But as i hardly use fullscreen mode (windowed allows the open the ingame console and then use alt-tab to switch to the other apps) i find the script rather comfortable..

[liolak]

im having the same issue with the screen saver kicking in when im playing full screen.
im not sure how to use that script esteel, is it used to start the game?
can someone help me in knowing what that script does, i would like to have that issue fixed.
i cant disable completely screensaver as doing so seem to also disable the power saving feature of the screen and i dont want my screen to stay on all night long.
tx