pulseaudio suddenly crashes, with "ratelimit" error message, while watching video clips or listening to songs

dmesg.log;uname-a.log version.log

karmic daily build sept 21 update and ugrade 22

Assigning to pulseaudio

I get these messages too while playing UrT and listening to webradio(vlc)
(after these messages appear, Urt has no sound any more)

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 12:42 PM, tankdriver <email address hidden> wrote:
> I get these messages too while playing UrT and listening to webradio(vlc)
> (after these messages appear, Urt has no sound any more)

You need to look in the log for the preceding messages, otherwise the
ratelimits are meaningless.

@ Daniel T Chen:
Here is the my syslog.

If I start Urt in a Terminal and the sound_failure happens,
there is the output:
...
dropping sound
dropping sound
dropping sound
...

(Maybe a other/UrT bug?)

I'd also like to report this problem. It's filling my syslog even when I don't have any audio programs running (other than maybe Pidgin logon notifications)

There are no other pulseaudio messages in the syslog.

Oct 6 12:06:04 acer5420 pulseaudio[1685]: ratelimit.c: 114 events suppressed

Getting a lot of these as well.

zgrep pulseaudio messages* |grep Oct
messages:Oct 11 13:10:30 quad pulseaudio[1868]: ratelimit.c: 3 events suppressed
messages:Oct 11 17:14:49 quad pulseaudio[1868]: ratelimit.c: 25 events suppressed
messages:Oct 11 17:15:08 quad pulseaudio[1868]: ratelimit.c: 33 events suppressed
messages:Oct 11 17:44:36 quad pulseaudio[1868]: ratelimit.c: 46 events suppressed
messages:Oct 11 17:50:38 quad pulseaudio[1868]: ratelimit.c: 16 events suppressed
messages:Oct 11 22:39:20 quad pulseaudio[1868]: ratelimit.c: 14 events suppressed
messages:Oct 11 22:40:38 quad pulseaudio[1868]: ratelimit.c: 32 events suppressed
messages:Oct 11 23:53:27 quad pulseaudio[17477]: pid.c: Stale PID file, overwriting.
messages:Oct 12 18:11:27 quad pulseaudio[17477]: ratelimit.c: 45541 events suppressed
messages.1:Oct 4 10:01:41 quad pulseaudio[1891]: ratelimit.c: 48116 events suppressed
messages.1:Oct 4 20:44:08 quad pulseaudio[4128]: reserve-wrap.c: Unable to contact D-Bus session bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: /bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the following error: Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.
messages.1:Oct 4 20:44:08 quad pulseaudio[4128]: reserve-wrap.c: Unable to contact D-Bus session bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: /bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the following error: Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.
messages.1:Oct 4 20:44:08 quad pulseaudio[4128]: reserve-wrap.c: Unable to contact D-Bus session bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: /bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the following error: Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.
messages.1:Oct 4 20:44:08 quad pulseaudio[4128]: reserve-wrap.c: Unable to contact D-Bus session bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: /bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the following error: Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.
messages.1:Oct 4 20:44:09 quad pulseaudio[4128]: main.c: Unable to contact D-Bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: /bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the following error: Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.
messages.1:Oct 6 18:53:51 quad pulseaudio[1868]: ratelimit.c: 3 events suppressed
messages.1:Oct 6 19:06:45 quad pulseaudio[1868]: ratelimit.c: 5 events suppressed
messages.1:Oct 6 19:22:02 quad pulseaudio[1868]: ratelimit.c: 3 events suppressed
messages.1:Oct 6 20:27:44 quad pulseaudio[1868]: ratelimit.c: 3 events suppressed
messages.1:Oct 6 23:42:56 quad pulseaudio[11863]: reserve-wrap.c: Unable to contact D-Bus session bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: /bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the following error: Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.
messages.1:Oct 6 23:42:56 quad pulseaudio[11863]: reserve-wrap.c: Unable to contact D-Bus session bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: /bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the following error: Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.
messages.1:Oct 6 23:42:57 quad pulseaudio[11863]: main.c: Unable to contact D-Bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: /bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the fo...

Same here... no other errors that appear related and nothing using pulse that I'm aware of, but the logs are stuffed with this ratelimit.c errors. This is karmic most recently updated on 10-12-09. These are *not* new, however. Don't actually know when they started, but it was, at minimum, weeks ago.

Oct 22 05:58:26 karmic kernel: [ 21.816198] b44: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex.
Oct 22 05:58:26 karmic kernel: [ 21.816204] b44: eth0: Flow control is off for TX and off for RX.
Oct 22 05:58:26 karmic kernel: [ 21.816467] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready
Oct 22 05:59:01 karmic pulseaudio[1653]: ratelimit.c: 2 events suppressed
Oct 22 05:59:25 karmic kernel: [ 81.132067] Clocksource tsc unstable (delta = -176555545 ns)

today same bug again

thanks

Here is what happens before ratelimit.c flows on my x86_64 karmic:

pulseaudio[2331]: main.c: Unable to contact D-Bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: /bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the following error: Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.
pulseaudio[3648]: pid.c: Stale PID file, overwriting.
pulseaudio[3648]: main.c: Unable to contact D-Bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoServer: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-aoFnjQYiwz: Connection refused

___________________________

Note: overall sound quality is awful.
- both sip clients - empathy and ekiga unable to provide any sound (both incoming and outgoing).
- rhytmbox suddenly stops playing music and start to eat 90% of CPU
- after restart sound is constantly interrupting

This is a MAJOR issue and it should resolved ASAP.

Think I'm getting something similar too. No crashes, but lots of annoyingly skippy sound, and lots of "ratelimit.c: X events suppressed" messages, without any other messages from pulseaudio. Suddenly started a few days ago, and I then updated to Karmic, and it's still here. Makes trying to listen to anything really annoying...

Please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio/Log

Hi, I have the same issue with the sound, for instance when I try to watch film on the youtube or using totem. Lines in the messages log file looks like:
Nov 9 21:00:44 despero pulseaudio[3284]: ratelimit.c: 98396 events suppressed
Nov 9 21:00:49 despero pulseaudio[3284]: ratelimit.c: 89036 events suppressed
Nov 9 21:03:58 despero pulseaudio[3490]: pid.c: Stale PID file, overwriting.
Nov 9 21:07:46 despero pulseaudio[3490]: ratelimit.c: 131 events suppressed
Nov 9 21:07:51 despero pulseaudio[3490]: ratelimit.c: 725 events suppressed
Nov 9 21:08:10 despero pulseaudio[3490]: ratelimit.c: 1746 events suppressed
Nov 9 21:28:00 despero kernel: [ 2982.356293] __ratelimit: 6 callbacks suppressed
Nov 9 21:28:00 despero kernel: [ 2982.356301] pulseaudio[6787]: segfault at 657550 ip 00657550 sp bf972d6c error 4 in libSM.so.6.0.0[6c3000+7000]
Nov 9 21:34:51 despero kernel: [ 3393.156529] pulseaudio[6846]: segfault at 367550 ip 00367550 sp bfe8df3c error 4 in librt-2.10.1.so[386000+7000]

you can find attached log file using verbose method described by Daniel T Chen's link. If there is need more information please let me know.

Maybe it is a important: as a output devices in the Volume control I have "Dummy output" just when the pulseaudio crashes; In the normal working I have "VT1708/A ..."

$ uname -srm
Linux 2.6.31-15-generic x86_64

$ cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 9.10 \n \l

$ grep pulseaudio /var/log/messages | wc -l
185

$ grep pulseaudio /var/log/messages | grep -v ratelimit.c
Nov 29 23:27:44 my pulseaudio[2707]: last message repeated 2 times
Nov 29 23:47:33 my pulseaudio[2707]: last message repeated 2 times
Nov 29 23:54:55 my pulseaudio[2707]: last message repeated 2 times
Nov 29 23:55:58 my pulseaudio[2707]: last message repeated 3 times
Nov 30 00:06:51 my pulseaudio[2707]: last message repeated 2 times
Nov 30 00:59:44 my pulseaudio[2707]: last message repeated 2 times
Nov 30 01:54:02 my pulseaudio[2707]: last message repeated 2 times
Nov 30 03:06:56 my pulseaudio[2707]: last message repeated 2 times

I see these messages whenever I have sound output (skype/vlc); And streaming radio in VLC is choppy.

I've run across this issue too, using Ekiga. Audio output is choppy for a few seconds, and then usually drops altogether -- which can cause Ekiga to hang for a few seconds or more. Unfortunately it's unusable. However from testing this a bit further, sound input is not interrupted the way playback is. Users on the other end of the call report hearing me even though I cannot hear them.

I've run a verbose log ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio/Log ) which I hope might be useful. In this case, I started pulseaudio, started Ekiga and made an echo test call, then hung up. The log is for about 60 seconds of activity.

This is the only application I have audio quality issues with.

Hope this helps!
Patrick

take a look of fedora workarounds , for it work using Work 2.
http://fedorasolved.org/Members/fenris02/pulseaudio-fixes-and-workarounds

with ekiga using pasuspender -- ekiga and change the audio preference to use alsa driver instead of the default pulseaudio driver.

I got this problem too. Had no problem with Jaunty at all, but after update to Karmic some of my colleagues complained about sound sometimes stopping (and only a reboot would fix it). They said that it mostly occurs when watching videos in Firefox (I mean Flash based videos like YouTube, etc.). Yesterday it happened to me too. I'm using pulseaudio in an LTSP setup (ie. LTSP server + thin clients). I've noticed that once sound was gone, the pulseaudio daemon process was not running on the client anymore. I've also found those "ratelimit.c" syslog entries from pulseaudio that others have mentioned before.
Unfortunately I've not yet found an easy to reproduce test case that would cause the pulseaudio daemon to crash. Because I think this is what's happening.

A memory leak fix was released recently in pulseaudio (v1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1), it's available in karmic-updates now. It might have been the cause of our problems. Time will tell.

Hmm: I just updated and I'm only now getting the zillions of ratelimit errors.

Jan 29 11:46:30 luna pulseaudio[2185]: ratelimit.c: 5 events suppressed
Jan 29 11:46:50 luna pulseaudio[2185]: ratelimit.c: 7 events suppressed
Jan 29 11:46:56 luna pulseaudio[2185]: ratelimit.c: 6 events suppressed
Jan 29 11:47:01 luna pulseaudio[2185]: ratelimit.c: 7 events suppressed
Jan 29 11:47:12 luna pulseaudio[2185]: ratelimit.c: 2 events suppressed
Jan 29 11:47:17 luna pulseaudio[2185]: ratelimit.c: 3 events suppressed

I still get this, after the update
Ubuntu 9.10
2.6.31-17-generic
AMD64x4
Gigabyte MB

Jan 29 16:12:44 infinity pulseaudio[4490]: ratelimit.c: 15 events suppressed
etc.

root@ion:~# uname -a
Linux ion 2.6.31-17-generic #54-Ubuntu SMP Thu Dec 10 16:20:31 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

Lates updates.
Feb 3 04:32:26 ion pulseaudio[4270]: ratelimit.c: 89724 events suppressed

I get the same error trying to play a DAAP share in Rhythmbox

ratelimit.c: 186 events suppressed

Linux mlb-dell 2.6.31-19-generic #56-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jan 28 01:26:53 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

I get the same error (on Ubuntu 9.10) at seemingly random events. I end up at the login screen in less than a second.

$ uname -a
Linux ubuntu 2.6.31-20-generic #57-Ubuntu SMP Mon Feb 8 09:05:19 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

Intel Core E4400 CPU, Asus P5B-V motherboard.

Mar 2 19:56:15 localhost pulseaudio[3214]: pid.c: Stale PID file, overwriting.
Mar 2 19:56:15 localhost bonobo-activation-server (marcel-3193): could not associate with desktop session: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-bAQ6MO1qx7: Connection refused
Mar 2 19:56:16 localhost pulseaudio[3214]: alsa-mixer.c: Your kernel driver is broken: it reports a volume range from 18,00 dB to 18,00 dB which makes no sense.
Mar 2 19:56:16 localhost pulseaudio[3214]: last message repeated 6 times
Mar 2 19:56:16 localhost kernel: [ 1224.804397] [drm] DAC-6: set mode 2048x1536 18
Mar 2 19:56:17 localhost pulseaudio[3214]: main.c: Unable to contact D-Bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoServer: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-bAQ6MO1qx7: Connection refused
Mar 2 19:56:31 localhost kernel: [ 1239.851153] [drm] DAC-6: set mode 1d

As to my previous post: "A memory leak fix was released recently in pulseaudio (v1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1), it's available in karmic-updates now. It might have been the cause of our problems. Time will tell."
Unfortunately it did not fix this problem. I just had sound dropped yesterday. The usual symptoms: the pulseaudio process disappeared on my LTSP client, the volume control icon disappeared from Gnome's notification area and no application was able to produce sound.

I also have pulseaudio problems.

uname -a
Linux studio01 2.6.31-20-generic-pae #58-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 12 06:25:51 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

All the latest updates are installed
In addition to Rhythmbox I am also running darkice which at some point starts running at 100% of CPU.
This is unacceptable considering the CPU is Intel Core 2 Duo.
From the messages file

Apr 11 11:19:01 studio01 pulseaudio[1665]: ratelimit.c: 11 events suppressed
Apr 11 11:35:23 studio01 pulseaudio[1665]: ratelimit.c: 1 events suppressed
Apr 11 11:37:38 studio01 pulseaudio[1665]: ratelimit.c: 1 events suppressed
Apr 11 11:54:27 studio01 pulseaudio[1665]: ratelimit.c: 1 events suppressed
Apr 11 12:06:02 studio01 pulseaudio[1665]: ratelimit.c: 4 events suppressed
Apr 11 16:37:00 studio01 -- MARK --
Apr 11 12:37:16 studio01 pulseaudio[1665]: ratelimit.c: 2 events suppressed
Apr 11 12:39:15 studio01 pulseaudio[1665]: ratelimit.c: 1 events suppressed
Apr 11 12:39:36 studio01 pulseaudio[1665]: ratelimit.c: 2 events suppressed
Apr 11 12:43:08 studio01 pulseaudio[1665]: ratelimit.c: 3 events suppressed
I cannot find any information on the net and I am not willing to remove pulseaudio
as this has the potential of creating even bigger problems.
The pulseaudio errors continue even after I stop darkice.

another god damn bug that will probably take four years to god damn fix, thanks Ubuntu

Linux station3 2.6.32-22-generic #33-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 28 13:27:30 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux
Lucid fresh install + updates

May 9 01:49:30 station3 pulseaudio[1460]: ratelimit.c: 598 events suppressed
May 9 01:52:14 station3 pulseaudio[1460]: ratelimit.c: 497 events suppressed
May 9 01:52:37 station3 pulseaudio[1460]: ratelimit.c: 602 events suppressed
May 9 01:54:09 station3 pulseaudio[1460]: ratelimit.c: 609 events suppressed
May 9 01:54:28 station3 pulseaudio[1460]: ratelimit.c: 499 events suppressed
May 9 01:54:59 station3 pulseaudio[1460]: ratelimit.c: 478 events suppressed
May 9 01:55:13 station3 pulseaudio[1460]: ratelimit.c: 492 events suppressed

tons of them in every audio output

Updating to package pulseaudio.

Hi,

I took suggestion from Davidiam and performed the changes recommended on:

http://fedorasolved.org/Members/fenris02/pulseaudio-fixes-and-workarounds

I also changed pulseaudio to run as root, not per user.

It worked fine so far.

Same bug, it's not possible to watch a film or listen music :'(

I was running Skype, which uses pulseaudio, but wasn't using the audio functionality. Also, I was using Virtualbox. The problem is that my XServer crashed while I was typing in Skype. When I checked the logs, I saw these last entries:

Sep 28 00:54:59 laptop kernel: [100317.622233] VirtualBox[8370]: segfault at 3 ip 0b230190 sp b5e5fe1c error 4
Sep 28 00:55:10 laptop pulseaudio[10371]: pid.c: Stale PID file, overwriting.
Sep 28 00:55:12 laptop bonobo-activation-server (mike100-10370): could not associate with desktop session: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-tGc6qlSHIx: Connection refused
Sep 28 00:55:12 laptop pulseaudio[10371]: main.c: Unable to contact D-Bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoServer: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-tGc6qlSHIx: Connection refused

So, evidently a running, idle Virtualbox can randomly cause your XServer to crash via a socket down with pulseaudio. I'm running Ubuntu Desktop 10.04.1 LTS.

Maverick 10.10 amd64

Affects me while playing anything, it is not possible to play some sounds over an hour. Pulse sudden crash away and has to be restartet. Only these lines appear in messages before it happes. Thats somewhat annoying and one of the biggest showstopper ever.

Dec 5 12:55:42 agamemnon pulseaudio[4083]: main.c: User-configured server at {5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc}unix:/home/eric/.pulse/5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc-runtime/native, not autospawning.
Dec 5 12:55:42 agamemnon pulseaudio[4087]: main.c: User-configured server at {5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc}unix:/home/eric/.pulse/5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc-runtime/native, not autospawning.
Dec 5 12:55:43 agamemnon pulseaudio[4090]: main.c: User-configured server at {5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc}unix:/home/eric/.pulse/5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc-runtime/native, not autospawning.
Dec 5 12:55:43 agamemnon pulseaudio[4093]: main.c: User-configured server at {5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc}unix:/home/eric/.pulse/5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc-runtime/native, not autospawning.
Dec 5 12:55:44 agamemnon pulseaudio[4096]: main.c: User-configured server at {5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc}unix:/home/eric/.pulse/5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc-runtime/native, not autospawning.
Dec 5 12:55:44 agamemnon pulseaudio[4099]: main.c: User-configured server at {5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc}unix:/home/eric/.pulse/5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc-runtime/native, not autospawning.
Dec 5 12:55:46 agamemnon pulseaudio[4100]: main.c: User-configured server at {5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc}unix:/home/eric/.pulse/5fd1d136931ea89ea88f3aea49625efc-runtime/native, not autospawning.

Same probleme with 2.6.31-11-rt on Ubuntu studio. I've attached pulseaudio verbose log. Any workaraound or fix are welcome

It must be a driver-problem related to alsa, even got this bug with alsa and hda intel stac 9200

10.10 AMD64

The card or driver does not matter, i bought "a good" soundblaster to get rid of this problem. But i'm wrong, pulse silently dies, the applications displays an error and pulse must be restarted with '-D' by hand. This happens while browsersound, gmusicbrowser, audacious, audacity etc etc etc etc

03:07.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy (rev 04)
03:07.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy Game Port (rev 04)
03:07.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Creative Labs SB Audigy FireWire Port (rev 04)

Hi! I have this problem with my SB Audigy SE, u can see this card here http://ru.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=205&product=14257

Pulseaudio reboted every 1-2 hours, then restarted again =(

[aslok@3r]2011.03.09-23:08:07:~$ cat /var/log/syslog | grep pulseaudio | tail
Mar 9 23:07:47 3r pulseaudio[23000]: ratelimit.c: 108 events suppressed
Mar 9 23:07:52 3r pulseaudio[23000]: ratelimit.c: 109 events suppressed
Mar 9 23:07:57 3r pulseaudio[23000]: ratelimit.c: 109 events suppressed
Mar 9 23:08:02 3r pulseaudio[23000]: ratelimit.c: 108 events suppressed
Mar 9 23:08:07 3r pulseaudio[23000]: ratelimit.c: 107 events suppressed
Mar 9 23:08:12 3r pulseaudio[23000]: ratelimit.c: 109 events suppressed
Mar 9 23:08:17 3r pulseaudio[23000]: ratelimit.c: 109 events suppressed
Mar 9 23:08:22 3r pulseaudio[23000]: ratelimit.c: 108 events suppressed
Mar 9 23:08:28 3r pulseaudio[23000]: ratelimit.c: 110 events suppressed
Mar 9 23:08:33 3r pulseaudio[23000]: ratelimit.c: 108 events suppressed
[aslok@3r]2011.03.09-23:08:33:~$

I did make level to error, and now can see only this:

[aslok@3r]2011.03.09-23:12:36:~$ cat /var/log/syslog | grep pulseaudio | tail
Mar 9 23:06:22 3r pulseaudio[23000]: alsa-sink.c: ALSA потребовала записать данные на устройство, но данных для записи не оказалось!
Mar 9 23:06:22 3r pulseaudio[23000]: alsa-sink.c: Скорее всего это ошибка в драйвере ALSA 'snd_ca0106'. Сообщите о ней разработчикам ALSA.
Mar 9 23:06:22 3r pulseaudio[23000]: alsa-sink.c: Был установлен флаг POLLOUT, однако snd_pcm_avail() вернула 0 или значение, меньшее min_avail.

It mean in english like this

alsa-sink.c: ALSA woke us up to write new data to the device, but there was actually nothing to write!
alsa-sink.c: Most likely this is a bug in the ALSA driver 'snd_ca0106'. Please report this issue to the ALSA developers.
alsa-sink.c: We were woken up with POLLOUT set -- however a subsequent snd_pcm_avail() returned 0 or another value < min_avail.

I can show u my configs, if need. I think, problem with 5.1 sorround and my ca0106...

Description: Ubuntu 10.10
Kernel: 2.6.35-27-generic
pulseaudio: 1:0.9.22-0ubuntu1
alsa: linux-alsa-driver-modules-2.6.35-27-generic (launchpad.net/~ubuntu-audio-dev/+archive/ppa)
alsa-base: 1.0.24+dfsg-0ubuntu1~10.10~ricotz1 (launchpad.net/~ricotz/+archive/unstable)

Hi!

The thing with this bug report is, that the different people probably are seeing different bugs. PulseAudio can crash for many different reasons, and I've fixed some of these in 12.04. I would therefore like you to retry with 12.04 to see if it works better for you.

Thanks!

[Expired for pulseaudio (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]