[alsa-devel] [alsa-lib] Query regarding snd_config_update_free_global() and threads etc.

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Colin Guthrie at 23/08/10 16:49 did gyre and gimble:
> 'Twas brillig, and Jaroslav Kysela at 23/08/10 16:13 did gyre and gimble:
>> On Mon, 23 Aug 2010, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>>
>>> Hi there,
>>>
>>> I've got a (hopefully quick) query about snd_config_update_free_global()
>>> and it's general thread safetyness.
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm currently going insane on this bug:
>>> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=232068
>>> which revolves around a bug manifested in snd_pcm_close() (or rather
>>> snd_pcm_ioplug_close()) when dealing with the ALSA->PulseAudio plugin.
>>>
>>>> From what I can gather, this problem is related to a KDE module that is
>>> loaded into the library in question which does some alsa probing and
>>> ultimately calls snd_config_update_free_global() several times. The
>>> library itself then goes on to use GStreamer to do actual audio output.
>>> The crash then manifests itself prior to any sound actually being output.
>>>
>>> I can reliably reproduce the machine on two machines (I don't have many
>>> at my disposal), but cannot reproduce on a third. The two I can
>>> reproduce it on are two and four core intel duo's. The one I cannot
>>> reproduce on is an older, single core machine. I am leaning towards some
>>> kind of thread safety issue.
>>>
>>>
>>> In searching for similar problems, I found several references to similar
>>> crashes attributed to snd_dlobj_cache_cleanup() perhaps not being thread
>>> safe.
>>
>> I tried to work on snd_dlobj_cache issues. Please, could you test this 
>> patch?
>>
>> http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-lib.git;a=commitdiff;h=91c9c8f1b85e69b4bdc94a777d2767c4906c3f47
> 
> Sure, will try and do so this evening and report back. Thanks!

That patch (along with 09879a4bb58199f64abcb8df506f917c8efc2383: pcm:
add defaults.pcm.minperiodtime parsing - just to avoid conflicts) on top
of 1.0.23 seems to fix the easily reproducible crash case for me. \o/

Awesome. Thanks!

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
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http://colin.guthr.ie/

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